


On the Bourbon Trail

by drop_an_idea_on_a_page



Series: Sua Sponte That Sh*t [10]
Category: Justified
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 07:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 37,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4469720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drop_an_idea_on_a_page/pseuds/drop_an_idea_on_a_page
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brazen bourbon theft - sixty-five cases of 20-yr-old Pappy van Winkle are stolen from the Buffalo Trace Distillery. What self-respecting Eastern District of Kentucky United States Marshal wouldn't want to be involved in the investigation?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Silliness based on a true-life story. Someone actually did steal 65 cases of Pappy van Winkle Bourbon from the Buffalo Trace Distillery a few years back.
> 
> Interestingly, the real Pappy theft has been solved since I started writing this. Nine people were indicted in Frankfort, Kentucky in April - a ring of illegal steroid and stolen bourbon pushers, all acquainted through the sport of softball. And yes, as suspected, the bourbon thefts were done by employees, an inside job, at both Wild Turkey and Buffalo Trace. I was hoping for international intrigue and crime syndicates, but apparently they were just drinking it and giving it away to friends or selling it at bargain prices.
> 
> There you go.
> 
> (No steroids were used in the writing of this story, however, some bourbon was consumed.)

* * *

" _Sixty-five."_ Art whistled expressively, opened both eyes wide. "Holy shit." He was standing by the coffee pot, one hip resting on the counter reading the morning paper. "Times twelve…that's…that's, uh…" He rolled his eyes up and right, thinking hard. "That's…"

"Seven hundred and eighty." Tim had his face in a file open on his desk, leaning in, staring at a report with singular intensity, as if the crosshairs were already in place for a head shot and he was waiting for the green light, but he spoke loudly enough that Art heard him just fine across the room.

Art did a slow, exasperated turn to look at his deputy. "You sure?"

"Yep."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"How'd you do that so fast? Do you have a calculator over there?"

"Nope."

"Well?"

"I'm a mental math fucking genius."

"You hide it well."

Tim tapped his temple with a finger. "I'm serious. Lots of math tricks hidden up here."

"What else is hidden up there? Do you see dead people?"

"All the time. Don't you? Or do you close your eyes when we get a call on a DB?"

"Only if Raylan was there first."

Art thought it a clever response, waited for a snort of appreciation for the humor, a laugh, a guffaw, some snark in return, a smirk even, anything. But Tim didn't look up, hadn't looked up once during the conversation, motionless, still-life with Glock. Art couldn't leave it alone this particular morning, a Monday morning. The imperturbable demeanor was a taunt, a dare even, precisely because it was a Monday morning, and Monday mornings were irritable mornings, made for poking at stuff that you shouldn't. You had all week, Art reasoned, to fix whatever got broken if what you were poking at reacted badly.

"Math tricks, huh? Do you fetch too?" This was said in Art's most insulting and sarcastic voice.

"Bark."

"Math tricks. Seriously, why?"

"For moments like this, Chief. I like to be prepared, plan for all eventualities, such as you needing to know what twelve times sixty-five is." Tim rolled a hand, some movement, but still not enough for Art. He couldn't get Tim's attention away from whatever it was that held it firmly, whatever was in that report.

"You're a regular boy scout."

Tim didn't reply; Raylan did.

"Tim's the guy with the cape, Art, remember? He's a superhero – Mathman." Raylan was smirking, even if Tim wasn't. "The mild-mannered Tim Gutterson is his alter ego."

Tim gestured vaguely in Raylan's direction. "There you go. My secret's out. I'm really Mathman."

Fresh coffee in his mug, Art folded his newspaper carefully, purposefully, and walked across to the other side of the bullpen, dropping the article he was reading face up on Tim's desk, covering the file and interrupting whatever Tim was contemplating.

"Do you mind?" said Tim, and then, finally, he looked up.

"You weren't paying attention when I gave you the 'piss off' look. Thought I'd hand-deliver it. …Tim?"

"What?"

"Piss off."

"Fine. Next time you can struggle your way through the multiplication. I ain't offering to help. Me and my alter ego will keep our mouths shut."

"I think," said Raylan, standing up from his desk and stretching, "that Art…"

"Oh fuck, he's thinking! Look out!" Tim pushed his chair violently to the right away from Raylan, and Art flinched.

" _I think, Tim,"_ Raylan said again, but more slowly and louder this time, "that Art wants to know why double digit mental multiplication is something that you'd bother with considering how little room there is in your teeny tiny brain in the first place. It's a bit like finding out your guard dog just won the Pulitzer for his literary work."

Raylan's insult appeared to hit Kevlar. It bounced off. Tim answered the question in the same monotone he always used, another short 'bark' aimed at Raylan the only evidence that it was felt at all. After the bark, he said, "This guard dog carries a rifle."

"Was that a threat?"

"Am I aiming at you?"

"Not yet."

"There's a lot of math involved in long range precision shooting. You get fast at it for what I hope are obvious reasons."

Art wasn't convinced. "I thought they had fancy targeting systems that do all that for you?"

"They do. But back in the day…"

The reaction to Tim's statement was immediate. Both Art and Raylan groaned.

" _Back in the day,"_ said Art. "Listen to him. _Back in the day._ How old is he anyway? Fifteen? Sixteen? Has he even gone through puberty yet?"

"I've seen him drinking at a public establishment – more than once actually – so he's got to be at least twenty-one."

"Right. I forgot you had to be twenty-one to apply to the Marshals Service. I guess they want to make sure you can drink."

Tim sat listening patiently, and when there was a lull he said, "Yes, there are excellent high-tech targeting systems. _But_ the military still train their snipers with tried and true methods, good old trigonometry and algebra, to work out angles and distance to target in case the technology fails or your battery dies. Try finding a Batteries Plus anywhere east of Kabul."

"Boy Scouts of America in camouflage."

"Be prepared and all that," was accompanied by a bad imitation of the Scouts' salute, then Tim gave Raylan and Art a classic held tilt. "Good enough reason for you?"

"I suppose."

"Great," a hand waving a dismissal, "Back to your lives, citizens. Mathman's job here is done."

Settling his hat on his head, Raylan picked up his wallet and pointed casually toward the door. "Art, I'm heading out."

"What for? Where?"

Raylan hesitated before he answered, and Art reacted to that hesitation, strolling over in front of Raylan's desk, hands on his hips to make him feel, however temporarily, that he was in control of his deputies. But Raylan was saved having to explain himself by a rare emotional outburst from Tim.

" _Sixty-five._ Holy shit is right."

"Sixty-five what?"

Holding up the newspaper for Raylan to read, but far enough away that all Raylan could read were the headlines, Tim repeated himself. "Sixty-five cases…gone. Am I drooling?"

Raylan leaned over the barrier, squinted at the print. "Holy shit." The words came out in a softer unconscious mimicking of Art and Tim's reaction to the news. Raylan reached across and took the paper from Tim and read it more carefully. "Sixty-five cases? That's…"

"Seven hundred and eighty bottles of Old Pappy stolen from the Buffalo Trace distillery in Frankfort yesterday," said Art. "Not to mention the nine cases of Family Reserve Rye taken. That makes…"

Art looked at Raylan; they both looked at Tim.

"Eight hundred and eighty-eight bottles," said Tim. "And that's without my cape."

"That's one hell of a party." Art wiped a hand slowly down his face, gazed into the distance, off on a bourbon daydream. "Or at least one drink a day, free, until I die."

"No, that's not right…" A finger up, Raylan dropped it in Art's direction. "There's only three bottles in a case of Pappy, not twelve."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. It's special."

"You've seen one?"

"Maybe."

"A hundred and ninety-five then," said Tim, "plus the rye. Still one hell of a party, but maybe not a drink a day till you die. What's the average life expectancy for a male? Seventy-eight, I think. You're fifty-six, that's…eight thousand drinks, about fourteen thousand ounces… Nope, it wouldn't get you to the coffin the way you pour." He tapped his temple again. "Mental math fucking genius."

"If I ever get my hands on a bottle of Old Pappy, Tim, I'll open it and think about you and toast your mental math fucking genius." Art smiled, magnanimous.

"I'd rather you just shared."

"Like hell."

"I shared my math genius."

"So? Not even close to the same thing." Art turned to follow up on his conversation with Raylan, but Raylan was already gone, the door of the bullpen closing behind him.

"Dammit. Tim, you distracted me on purpose."

"Did not."

"Did too. Where's he going?"

"I don't know." Tim was back to glaring at the file. "I don't care."

Art picked up his newspaper from Raylan's desk, tucked it under his arm then picked up the receiver of Raylan's phone, dialed a number he apparently knew by heart. He waited patiently, eyes settling on the page that had won the contest for Tim's attention, trying to make out the print upside-down. "What is that you're staring at anyway?" But he didn't wait for a reply, a voice on the line cutting in, distracting him, and he turned away. "Raylan, where the hell are you going?"

The conversation was brief. Art set the receiver back in the cradle and looked heavenward. "Shit. Harlan. Don't know why I bothered asking." But no one was paying him any attention.

* * *

Tim finished the last half of his sandwich in two bites while he waited for the printer to spit out the morning's work. The papers were stapled into three piles, except for the last sheet, a photo of a man's face which Tim folded in half, then again, and slipped into his jeans' pocket. Leaning over his computer he opened the top drawer of his desk and picked out a pen, signed the top sheet of each pile, threw the pen back on his desk, then walked over to Art's office and leaned on the door frame. Art was holding up his head with one hand while the other was scribbling notes beside a column on a spreadsheet. Tim waited a few minutes to see if Art would notice him, then gave up and knocked lightly on the door. Art looked up.

Tilting his head north and approximately west, Tim said, "I'm driving up to Frankfort to do my qualifying."

"Is it that time again already?"

"Yep. Every month."

"Okay, but you're not leaving until those reports are done."

Tim stepped into the office and dropped the stack of papers on Art's desk from high enough that when they hit, dust and phone messages wafted outward in a circle. "Done, printed, signed. See you after four. I'll be a few hours."

Art glanced at the finished reports, then at Tim's back moving toward the door. "Hey, Tim, wait up. I think I'll come with you." Standing up quickly, Art grabbed his holster and his jacket. "I haven't tagged along on one of your range trips in a while."

"The range officer can sign off on it, Boss. No need."

"I know. I just feel like getting out."

"It's nothing very exciting."

"Better than the boring shit I have to do today. Besides, it's Monday," said Art, as if that explained everything. "You're driving though."

"All right."

They walked together across the bullpen and out the door to the hallway. Tim headed for the stairs but Art snagged his collar and pulled him back. "Elevator," he said. "My knees are stiff today."

The elevators were refurbished, but still reasonably old in the 1930's court house, and always busy, so they waited, Tim less patiently than Art. Art watched, amused, while Tim pulled out his phone, checked for texts, put it away again, took a couple of steps toward the window then back, pulled out his sunglasses and put them on, then took them off. When Tim started pacing again, Art decided to distract him with an idea that came to him looking out at Lexington through the window at the end of the hall. He thought Tim might be interested.

"We live in bourbon country."

"News flash."

Art ignored him. "Ninety-five percent of the world's bourbon is made right here in this state."

"You can still buy it in every Walgreens in the country."

"That's not the point. Have you ever actually been to the Buffalo Trace Distillery?"

"No."

"Me neither. I've driven by the place often enough. I hear it's a nice spot."

"Is this just you making small talk?"

"No."

"I wasn't sure."

"What d'you say we stop by after? It's just down the hill from the Training Center."

"You thinking of working that theft, finding that Old Pappy for yourself?"

"I'm sure they've got everyone in the state on it. I don't know a law enforcement officer in Kentucky that wouldn't love to get their hands on a bottle of that bourbon. Nah, I'd just like to see the place."

"Uh-huh."

"No, really. And it's quiet today."

"Chief, do I need to remind you that Raylan's in Harlan right now?"

Art scowled. "I officially hate you. I had put myself into a practiced state of blissful forgetfulness about Raylan, and you smack me with that. I thought we were friends."

"You're my boss."

"Yeah, but still…"

"And you said you wouldn't share your Pappy van Winkle."

"I don't have any."

"That's not the point."

The elevator arrived. The ride was quiet, each man thinking about bourbon.

"Do you think they have a sampling bar?" said Tim when the elevator doors opened on the main floor.

"That's what I'm hoping."

"Probably no Pappy though."

"No, probably not. Maybe some Blanton's."

"… I'll be quick at the range."

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

It was a pretty day, late November, endless blue in the sky, the other two primary colors warming up the trees. The trip up to Frankfort was uneventful, a Sunday drive, and the range was pleasant in the sun behind the Kentucky State Police Training Academy. Tim made his shot, then sat up and looked around for Art. Watching from his booth, the range officer made a show of wiggling his pen, sauntered over to the line. Tim offered up his paperwork and the man put his John Hancock on the page with a flourish.

"Another day, another bull's-eye."

"Bullet in, bullet out," said Tim. "Thanks."

"No problem."

"Where'd the old man go?"

"He's in chin-wagging with the Commander."

Tim looked at the door of the Academy, then at his watch. "Can I…?" He gestured downrange.

"Yeah, sure. Go right ahead. No one's booked in today. The new recruits are out doing driver training."

"I got a special target I want to put up. You mind…?" Another vague wave downrange.

"Go right ahead. I'll stand here and make sure nobody shoots you."

"Appreciate that." Tim pulled a piece of paper from his jeans' pocket. "You got some tape?"

"Yep." They walked back to the officer's booth and he dug out some masking tape and handed it over. "Looks like the wind's picking up."

"Great. I love a challenge. I only get to make at most hundred-yard shots these days. Hardly worth getting outta bed for."

The officer snorted, said, "Quit bragging."

Tim raised his eyebrows and sighed dramatically. "It's not easy being this good." He trotted off across the range, stopping at the four hundred yard marker, not far enough out for his liking, but, unsure when Art would return, he decided it would have to do. Unfolding his target, he taped it to a butt, tapped the face between the eyes, turned and ran back to the line. He was a little out of breath and happy about it when he lay back down on the grass, something else to overcome to make the shot, add some more challenge.

By the time Art walked up behind him and kicked his boot, Tim had put three rounds into the paper as fast as his bolt-action rifle would let him, to make up for cheapening the distance to target. He ignored Art, focused and put one more through the forehead of the man in the photo for good measure, then he sat up and smiled.

"You ready to go?" said Art.

"Ready when you are."

"I'm ready."

"I'll just be a minute breaking down, and I gotta collect my target."

"Why don't I get it for you while you put your stuff away? The knees could use some flat terrain exercising."

The smile disappeared. "Don't worry about it. I'll get it. It'll only take…"

But Art was already heading across the grass, snarling as he went. "Goddammit, I'm not an invalid. I'll be right back."

Tim bit his lip then scrambled to get his rifle in the case, thinking he could probably beat Art out there if he ran fast enough. But Art's amble was deceptively quick. He was standing with his arms crossed, studying the photo taped over the target when Tim arrived a little out of breath from an Olympic-record four-hundred-yard dash.

"Nice shooting."

"Uh…thanks."

"Nice target."

"Uh…"

"You wanna explain this?"

"Uh…"

"No. No. Don't. Let's wait, shall we? You can explain it later, maybe while we're doing some bourbon tasting. Something tells me I'm gonna need a drink for this."

* * *

Art stewed and Tim drove, down through the limestone cliffs and into the valley cut by the Kentucky River to the turn that took them to the Buffalo Trace Distillery. They pulled into the visitor's parking, Art keeping up an uncomfortable silence and Tim tapping a rhythm of unease on the steering wheel with his fingers. It wasn't until they were out of the car and walking, following the signs for the visitor's house, that Art broached the subject again.

"So, let's hear it. Who's the dead man in your sights?"

Tim's fingers stopped their drumming. "He was still breathing last I saw him."

"You sound worryingly disappointed."

The grunt in reply was noncommittal. Art reached out and stopped Tim, physically brought him around so they were face-to-face.

"Imagine for a minute how that piece of paper will look in the hands of a prosecutor in a murder trial if your guy shows up dead."

"I'm preventing a crime, not committing one, keeping myself from doing some seriously inconvenient violence."

"I don't think that argument will hold up against the evidence – morally or legally."

"I'm just working out frustration, Chief, nothing more."

"That's not the way most people work out their frustrations."

"It's not?"

Art brought both hands up to his face, dragged them slowly down, pausing halfway to dig his fingers into his eyes. "No," he said when they cleared his mouth. "In fact, that kind of behavior, which might seem harmless to you, and maybe even funny – God knows I wouldn't care to guess what goes on in that head of yours – would send up red flags on any psych eval."

"Are you threatening that again?"

"Does it worry you?"

"Maybe."

"Well, I'm happy something worries you. But in what way does it worry you? And for once think before you speak, because how you answer could mean the difference between whether I go through with my threat or not."

"It worries me how you see me. You don't seriously think I'd shoot someone just because they pissed me off? This guy doesn't even carry – he's a pro-gun-law lobbyist."

"Oh, so you mean you only think I'd disapprove if you shot someone who was _unarmed_ and pissed you off?"

"Come on, Chief. I'm being funny and you know it."

"Do you see me laughing? Your idea of funny puts me on edge."

"Since when? You're usually hawing it up with me. I just figured you were playing the straight guy today."

"You usually don't use pictures of actual people for target practice."

"Just this one time."

"Oh, well, that's okay then."

Tim shrugged, crossed his arms tightly across his chest. "Maybe we should talk about this after you've had a drink like you suggested. You seem a little tense."

"Maybe you should… _Look at that."_ Art's eyes had refocused from the rubbing and were now fixed on a warehouse in his view, six stories of hundred-year-old red brick with oddly placed and intricate plumbing decorating the outside and a barrel rail running beside it, linking it to another warehouse. A door on ground level was propped open and through it, down past a trio of old stone steps, deep in the dim and dusty light of the interior, Art could just make out the ends of oak barrels stacked and stamped. He walked past Tim and down the steps to the door and peered inside and let out a soft whistle. "I imagine this is what heaven looks like," he said.

Coming up behind, peeking over Art's shoulder, Tim opened his mouth to say something, but there were no words he could find for this. He gaped. Art turned a bit to let Tim have a piece of the narrow doorway, and they both poked their heads a little farther inside. Barrels filled the length and breadth of the room, hundreds of them, stacked three high on a framework of wood that looked as old as the brick façade.

Eventually, Tim found his tongue again, and it had a hankering for a drink. "Do you think it's the same on every floor?"

"I suspect so." Art let his eyes adjust to the gloom, then he let them wander down an aisle, counting rows of barrels. When he got to twenty he stopped.

But Tim kept going, took another step inside and leaned his head around the first row to peek down the width of the building. "How many floors, do you think?"

Art backed up, outside, and counted windows. "Six."

"Then there's got to be over twenty thousand barrels in here."

"Thank you, mental math fucking genius, for encouraging my alcohol addiction."

"Like you need encouraging."

"Sweet Jesus in heaven, I can actually smell it. Can you smell it? The beautiful aroma of Kentucky bourbon."

"I always think of caramel apples. And Steve."

"Steve?"

"Mr. Nickell, my neighbor growing up. He drank bourbon, used to let me have some on weekends."

Art made a face, hard to read, enough in it though that Tim qualified his comment with another shrug, feeling vaguely like he'd been caught out at something. "Half a shot, barely." He held up a hand, finger and thumb measuring out a meager amount.

"That'd be enough to get you half shot at that age." Art wiggled his eyebrows. "I used to sneak some from my daddy's collection. I'm sure he knew. I think of tobacco when I smell bourbon. He would sit in the living room after work and smoke and take little sips from his special bourbon glass. He actually had a special bourbon glass, kept it beside the bourbon, and he'd have a drink and a cigarette, one each, then wash the glass and put it back for the next day. That was _his_ glass. None of us was allowed to touch it. I have it now, use it just like he did."

"Bet you have more than one in it though. You'll probably wear it out."

"My daddy worked for the State, road work supervisor. Not as much stress as law enforcement."

"Good rationalization, Boss."

Backing out of the building again, Art turned toward the river. "I think that gorgeous caramel apple smell is coming from this direction. Let's follow our noses, shall we?"

With each step down the laneway between the warehouses, the aroma of caramel and vanilla, the oak and smoke, the smells and memories of bar laughter and living room fires grew and blended until they all together seemed too large to fit into a bottle. Another open door in a smaller old and brick building invited, and Art walked right in, his nose leading.

"I think your nose just found the wellspring." Tim spoke in a church voice, reverent, licked his lips and stared at the vat of bourbon at the end of the room. A line of bottles was marching along a conveyor belt toward the back to be filled, and a half-dozen employees were at work, corking, labeling. Bourbon was thick in the air, clinging to the marshals in a way that was comforting and overwhelming at the same time.

Worries left behind in the cold and sunshine outside, Art leaned back against the wall inside the door and smiled. A woman loading a case at the end of one line smiled back.

Taking a deep breath in, Art enjoyed a little olfactory tasting. "I think I'll apply for a job right here when I retire, become a bourbon bottler." He jabbed a finger toward the floor. "I wanna work right here in this room."

"Maybe I'll come join you."

A security guard walked up behind them, stepped around Tim and peered past Art into the bottling room. Satisfied that there were only the two of them, he faced them, eyed them up and down suspiciously, expression stern. "This is private property. Can I help you, gentlemen?"

Art smiled to disarm, cranked up the hillbilly. "I understand you have some bourbon around here?"

"Just a bit."

There were privileges to working in law enforcement that Art was happy to take advantage of at times like this. He waved his ID and Marshal's star. "We were just up the road at the KSP training facility, heard you had a theft…" He left it at that, hoping to invite an assumption from the guard.

"That happened at the distribution warehouse, not here. If you want I can get someone who knows more about it down from the office to talk to you. Are they expecting you?"

"No. Just thought we'd drop in and see what's what. The Marshals Service's responsibilities are such that just about every type of criminal trips and falls in our path at some point or other, so we try to keep up on local crime in case we run across something of importance that's related, can help out somehow. It's amazing how often it happens. Needless to say, this theft is a tragedy of biblical proportions. It's got our attention."

The guard was softening, mouth twitching up. "It's got everyone's attention. You like bourbon?"

Tim grinned. "You must be psychic."

"Must be. Either that or you're drooling and I'm too polite to say."

Tim wiped at his lips, scowled at Art. "I asked you before if I was drooling. You never said."

"Let me see who's in. Maybe we can get you a private tour."

"Any tasting possible?"

"I'm sure we have something open behind the bar in the guest house, for the public tours, of course."

"Of course," said Art. "For the tours."

There was a shared nod of conspiracy.

The master distiller was in and happy to talk about the theft, hash it through again for sympathetic and helpful ears. He gave Art and Tim an insider's tour while they talked, left them alone after an hour standing at the oak bar in the back of the gift shop, each sipping happily on a sample of the distillery's namesake bourbon after a taste, with grimaces from them both, of the White Dog Mash #1.

"I definitely like it better after it's been barreled and aged." Art smacked his lips together and leaned back against a post. "All right, Tim. I think I'm ready. Where were we?"

"You really want to do this? It's nothing."

"Tell me, or I'll write you up for drinking on duty."

"That would be hypocritical."

"Then don't make me do it."

Tim appeared to be contemplating the logic in that reasoning, then eventually, giving way to the inevitable, he told Art what he wanted to hear. "He's this asshole I met at a dinner thingy."

Art turned slightly paler, his expression now more worried, if that were possible. "He's _not_ a felon?"

"Not as far as I know. He's a philanthropist. Though I did find mention of him in the database, mostly customs infractions."

"You ran his name?"

"It was an accident."

"An accident? How…? Oh, never mind. I don't care. What did he do to earn being a target?"

Tim took a deep breath in, let it out in a huff. "He said snipers were cowards."

"Oh." Art took a deep breath, too, but let it out slowly, reflecting on the comment. "Did he know about you and your particular career history?"

"No."

"Not personal then."

"Very fucking personal."

"All right, okay, calm down."

"I am calm. I got to shoot the fucker four times today with my _sniper_ rifle. Now I'm calm."

"Tim…"

"Uh-uh, no way. If he'd been insulting just me, I couldn't give a shit. But it's not just about me. I got a lot of friends who are snipers. These guys all had to prove themselves in the rifle squads first. These guys train hard and put themselves out there to protect their buddies. They risk it, too. They got families. It's not an easy thing to take a life to protect someone, not when it's not a direct threat to you. It takes a certain kind of thinking. Cold and calculating, sure, whatever – I'll live with that – but _not_ cowardly."

"Tim, no one who knows you would call you a coward."

"He said it to my face."

"He didn't know."

"Doesn't matter. You shouldn't make blanket statements like that if you don't know shit." Tim wagged his head, almost a comedy. "Ignorance is a lame excuse for being an asshole. Can't shoot a guy for being ignorant though."

"No, you can't." Art scrambled for a redirect. "What was this dinner thingy?"

"It was for a charity that Milja's involved in."

"So she was there?"

"Yep."

"Did she hear this?"

"Yep."

"What did she do?"

"Oh, you can imagine. She took one look at my face and decided we needed to leave early, shoved me out the door. Then she took me home and distracted me from thinking about it too much."

"She managed to distract you from a comment like that?"

"Yeah."

"How? Maybe it's something she could teach me."

Tim twitched, stepped back. "No. Uh-uh. Chief, trust me – it's something only she could do."

"Oh...right." Art cleared his throat, studied his glass. "We'll pretend this part of the conversation never happened."

There was an awkward pause before they finished their drinks and headed to the car.

* * *

 


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

Miljana mused about the archaic and symbolic wearing of the boyfriend sweater as she rounded the corner on the block where she and Tim lived. Intellectually, she viewed the tradition as something akin to changing your surname when you got married, a symbol of ownership that she balked at, and she walked the walk of her ideals, keeping her family name, Čajić, even after she and Tim had snuck down to City Hall and done the old-fashioned legal hitching. She didn't wear a wedding ring, either. She still wasn't sure why she had agreed to get married at all, intellectually anyway, but emotionally she had to confess to herself, and only herself, that being married was, in her mind, an affectionate and sincere handshake between her and Tim, and being an old-fashioned act made it all the more meaningful, unforced and unnecessary as it was. The whole thing felt a bit silly, and she would giggle whenever she had to introduce Tim as 'her husband', like she was in a stage play from the 1950s. It was kind of nice too, though, she had to admit, a bit of ownership that went both ways. She called it a legal partnership whenever anyone, like her brothers, scoffed at her sentimentality.

But back to the sweater. She wasn't actually wearing Tim's sweater but carried it draped over one arm, his Ranger hoodie, the RANGERS part in large and obvious capital letters across the back, LEAD THE WAY printed underneath it, leaving no doubt which RANGERS were being advertised, not a baseball team or a hockey team, not a park warden, not Texas or Colorado State law enforcement, not a Japanese superhero in brightly-colored unitard, but the US Army Rangers, SOCOM, shock troops. She borrowed it every Monday, wore it, or draped it conspicuously on her chair on warm days, when she ran her group therapy sessions at the VA Medical Center. It magically warded off any amorous advances from her male clients. She would purposely _carry_ it into the building, putting it on only during the sessions, then take it off and _carry_ it again on the way home. It was a point of pride that she not wear it like a boyfriend sweater but use it only as a tool when her job required it, to help her help the veterans she worked with by putting up roadblocks to prevent any entanglements or misunderstandings that might interfere with their recovery.

That was what she told herself. Unfortunately her career required an honest look at emotions and that included her own. Doctor heal thyself. Intellectually, the sweater was a tool; emotionally, it was pure chocolate. She loved putting it on. It smelled like Tim, like gun oil, a smell that she was growing annoyingly fond of. Taking it off was an intellectual win, an emotional loss. Hard to feel triumphant when the books were tallied and your emotions came out in the red.

She held it up and took a deep breath of it and relaxed a little. That smell was a promise that someone was waiting for her when she got home, someone who cared enough to ask about her day. Or, realistically, not so much a promise, but an _intention_ of being there, and that was something.

When she opened the door and stepped inside, late, past eight on Mondays, session nights, the smell of gun oil was strong in the house, and not from the sweater, and that meant Tim was home and cleaning his rifle. She frowned, thoughts going immediately to the events at the charity dinner on the weekend.

"Tim?"

Gun oil on a Saturday or Sunday was normal; gun oil on a weeknight meant that Tim was chewing on something, and working on his rifle was his idea of active meditation.

"Tim?"

She heard the chair scraping as he pushed away from the table, and Tim appeared at the end of the hall.

"Hey."

"Hey."

He walked quickly to the door, scooped her up, bag, boyfriend sweater and all, and squeezed tightly. She was engulfed in that hug with all the familiar smells of 'them,' the legal partnership, though at moments like this that description seemed inadequate, insulting the complexity of her emotions.

When her feet felt floor again and she could put some space between herself and the crowding arms, she eyed him suspiciously. "You're not still pissed about that comment, are you?"

"No." He leaned in and kissed her. "Why?"

"You're sharpening your saber."

"I did my qualifying today."

She chewed her lip and studied his face. "Really?"

"Really. Did the armor work?" The hoodie had slipped after the squeezing and was almost on the floor. Tim grabbed it and tossed it on the couch.

"Yes. It has amazing powers. I think they're all picturing a six-foot, two-hundred pound, jealous, violent…" She paused, tired, trying to scrounge an appropriate noun from her weary brain.

"Ranger?"

"Yeah."

"But instead you got a…?"

"…"

"Believe it or not, I was not the smallest guy in my batt."

"No?"

"Nope, though the guys who were shorter than me could pretty much all bench press five hundred pounds. Built like fucking tanks, kinda cube-shaped."

"Why the Rangers, Tim?"

"Have we not discussed this?"

"Remind me."

"I was young, remember? Violence of action. Taking names and chewing bubble gum, or in this case dip. It was exciting. Can we leave it at that?"

"…"

"Alright, no. So they asked me if I wanted to volunteer for the Regiment in Basic, like I told you before, and then, well, I just couldn't say 'I quit' in front of everybody in RIP. That's what they make you do, say 'I quit' in front of everybody." Tim swept his arm out to encompass the imaginary group. "Though in hindsight, I think they expected me to. I was pretty scrawny. But that's the secret, you just don't say 'I quit.' Definition of a Ranger – 'I don't quit.' So they had me there. I was more stubborn than scrawny. I think it worked out alright."

Miljana was a stomach spasm shy of a laugh by the time he'd finished. "You're adorable," she said and ran a hand down the front of his shirt affectionately.

"Adorable?"

She walked into the kitchen and took in the disaster zone that was the kitchen table, gun parts and cleaning tools and an empty glass and an empty plate. She yawned. "I'd have quit the minute I discovered they didn't have a bathtub in the barracks."

"That would've been pretty early on then. No blisters and bruises for you."

"Nope, just a nice warm bath."

"It's a good thing you weren't there when I was going through."

"Why?"

"I might've quit just to follow your ass out of the gate."

"No, you wouldn't have. You weren't ready to appreciate me back then. You had to go hang around a bunch of smelly noisy guys first to really understand what you were missing."

"Smelly guys and goats. Almost eight years of it. I'm a slow learner. Did you eat already?"

She didn't answer, distracted looking at the brand new bottle of bourbon sitting beside the rifle and the gun oil. "If we were to dissect you, this is what we'd find." Walking over, she picked up the bourbon. "Gun oil, bourbon, bullets."

"Cut you open and we'd find sarcasm…sarcasm…and more sarcasm."

"How was your day?" she said, smiling.

"Interesting," he said, and told her about it.

"You got a private tour?"

"That's right."

"Just because you're a marshal?"

"You make it sound like an abuse of power or something."

"Did they _give_ you the bottle to take home?"

"No." Tim looked offended, a bit baffled by Miljana's reaction to his description of the day. "I bought it at the gift shop after we tried some."

"A bourbon gift shop?"

"I got this, too – _The_ _Bourbon and Bacon_ _Cookbook._ Check it out." Swiping the book off the counter, Tim started reading the index: "Bourbon Pecan Pie, Bacon-Bourbon Caramel Popcorn – oh, that sounds good. Or maybe something healthy? – Bourbon and Bacon Mashed Potatoes, Bacon and Bourbon Collards…"

"Stop! Gah, I can feel my pants getting tighter around the hips just listening to you reading from it." She was still studying the bottle. "You and Art were drinking? What time was it?"

"We were _sampling."_

"Gah."

"Art needed it about then. I was keeping him company."

"Art needed a drink? Why?"

Setting the cookbook back on the counter, Tim stuffed a hand into his jeans' pocket, pulled out and unfolded the target he had been using at the range, and held it up for her, a prize. He grinned happily.

It took a second for Miljana to understand what he was showing her. She studied the face, recognition dawned, then she made sense of the holes in the paper, nice grouping. "Tim! What the fuck?!"

"What?"

"Give it to me." She snatched it and took a box of matches from a drawer and lit the corner of the paper, letting it burn, then dropped it into the sink when the flames started licking at her fingers.

"That's a bit dramatic."

"That's a lot damning. Nice shooting though."

Tim turned on the tap and doused the flames. "That's exactly what Art said, just different words and a different order. He commented on the shooting first."

"Tim," shoulders drooping, she reached a hand out, pleading, "Craig Franklin is an idiot. Forget about him. Don't give any weight to his words. I already called him and told him to find someone else to help him with the fundraising. You won't run into him again unless you go looking for him."

"You quit? But you liked that charity."

"There are plenty more out there that could use some help. I'll find another one."

"But…"

"No buts. Sometimes you have to choose a side. I resent what he said – for your sake and mine. You are not a coward. Neither are your friends – a bit crazy maybe…"

"You're starting to sound freakishly like Art."

"I hope Art said don't do that again." She pointed, exasperated, at the soggy ashes in the sink. "God, if you want to shoot at something annoying, take my laptop, please."

"Is it acting up again?"

He sounded so sincere in his concern for her, yet so unconcerned in her sincere efforts to get him off the track of the three words that had been burned into her prefrontal cortex because of her association with him – _snipers are cowards_. Miljana huffed, drifted defeated across the floor to Tim and thumped her head on his chest. "It's properly fucked. I had to reboot it six times today. I need a new one."

"I'll take it out to the range on the weekend and put it down for you. Hey, I know – I could get Mr. Asshole Franklin's photo off the internet and set it up as wallpaper on your screen and…"

"No! Fuck, Tim."

"Now?" He slipped his hands around her back, pulled her in tight, backed her into the counter. "Here?"

"Gah!" was all she could get out before he started chewing on her lip, but when he started down her chin to her neck, she said, "When are you going to grow up? How old are you?"

"Don't worry. It wouldn't be statutory. I'm over sixteen."

"Biologically maybe."

Tim lay awake later, Miljana's hair tickling his nose until he couldn't stand it anymore, the tickling overcoming his longing to face her. He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling and tried to imagine what she might be dreaming about, gave up and tried to imagine what he might be dreaming about if he were actually sleeping. Afghanistan, likely. It happened often enough when he remembered his dreams, so he figured it likely happened as often when he didn't remember, or more even. It wasn't always bad dreams, though usually intense. Sometimes he woke up happy to be in his bed in Lexington; sometimes he woke wishing he wasn't in Lexington yet, that he still had some time in the Regiment. He liked his work as a Deputy US Marshal, mostly, but it could never hope to compete, could never hope to begin to compare with his work as a Ranger. What could? All the good and the bad, the frustration and the satisfaction, the extremes of thrills and boredom, the euphoria and the anguish, good luck finding a substitute unless he could get himself on the Mars mission with NASA, and even then. He was starting to get an itch, something in his brain, somewhere he couldn't reach. He needed a change, though nothing permanent, just a break, a vacation.

"I'm thinking of taking some vacation," he said aloud, not too loud though in case Miljana was truly asleep.

"What?"

She wasn't asleep. Her voice was foggy though.

"I'm thinking of taking some time off. Do you want to do something?"

"What?"

"Are you awake?"

"Yes." She rolled over and faced him. "Is everything okay?"

"Fine. Why?"

"You never take vacation."

"You want to?"

"I can't right now. I took vacation last month, remember? We were supposed to go to the cabin. You got called to Louisiana, remember? I took a lot of baths and visited with my mom."

"Right. I ended up in Baltimore for that trial."

"That's right, Baltimore. And I was here in Lexington, vacationing without you." She yawned widely and loudly and exaggeratedly. "You should take some time anyway. Go help Fischer at the range. Hang out. Relax. Cook me dinner every night – bourbon and bacon me to death."

She was starting to mumble, fading, curled up on her side bringing her knees against him. Turning his head toward her, he let her hair tickle his nose. He thought about the warrants on his desk, no court appearances on the horizon, off rotation at SOG this month. He thought about walking off the back of a Chinook into the unknown, a landscape of flattened satellite images and darkness and gunfire. The itch came back.

The office wouldn't miss him, not for five days, and he wouldn't miss it.

* * *

 


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

"…a vacation?"

What Tim had hoped would be a two-minute conversation with Art the next morning, a quick request for time off and an equally quick okay, was dragging closer to a half hour because Art refused to believe what he was hearing. He had forced Tim to repeat the request, and they were currently working on a third attempt.

The first time through, Art had tapped at his hearing aid and shrugged at Tim and said, "I think I need new batteries. I'd swear you were asking for some time off, but that can't be right. What did you say? Can you repeat it?"

Tim had tilted his head a tiny bit, just enough to let Art know he was being a good deputy and playing along with the joke, made the request a second time, a little louder. "I'd like a week off. Va-ca-tion."

Art had stared back at him. "It's not the batteries, is it?"

A slow shake of his head, still playing along, "Nope."

Worry and confusion, Art had heaped both into a melodramatic expression then leaned sideways in his chair to peer around Tim out into the bullpen.

"What are you looking at?" Tim had turned too, curious, saw nothing unusual and turned back.

"I'm not looking _at_ anything. I'm looking _for_ something."

"What?"

"The Rapture."

"Are you already into the bourbon this morning?"

"I just figure you must know something I don't and are asking for a week off to do some good, atone in anticipation, cramming for the exam so to speak, maybe a confession…or sixty."

"I'd need more than a week."

That statement had stalled the conversation further while Art ruminated on it. Facetious or realistic? It was hard to tell when it was delivered in a deadpan by Tim. "Good point. It's gotta be something else. So what is it you want? I heard vacation but maybe you said…promotion?"

Art had raised his eyebrows to punctuate the question, and Tim had mirrored the action, figuring what the hell, maybe he could get a promotion _and_ some vacation time out of this game.

"Sure, promotion, sounds good."

"I could certainly check into your file, see if you've made it through all the checkpoints, then I'd have to get in touch with the higher ups and put in a request…"

Tim had then asked a third time, hoping for some of that proverbial charm, "Do you think I could take a week off while you're doing all that?"

And Art's response, "What d'you mean, a week off? You, away from work? …a vacation?"

Tim reached across the desk and nabbed a bright orange pad of Post-It notes, snatched the pen from Art's hand and scribbled VACATION in capital letters onto the orange, underlined it aggressively, then tossed it back in front of Art. Art studied it carefully, turning it one way then the other, said, "I can't quite make it out. Does that say vanish…vanquish…vacillate…Vatican…?"

"I think I now have cause to make a complaint against you with Human Resources. You have repeatedly ignored my request for time off, and I recall you getting a letter from them about my accumulating too much vacation time and holding it over my head in a threatening manner not even four weeks ago. There may have been some yelling, some physical abuse… I think I even have witnesses. Can we get Rachel in here? She'll remember it."

Art blinked. "When do you want to start your week, oh favorite Deputy?"

"Tomorrow. I got nothing on the schedule."

"Done. See you next Wednesday."

"Great." Tim stood up.

"Actually Tim, why don't you start now? Cut loose a little. Make it six days. It really is a weirdly quiet week. My desk is clean. Look."

"I got some things I wanna do first, people to bother, one of the lawyers downstairs owes me lunch…"

"Which one?"

"New public defender."

"Fine. Come back before you head out at the end of the day. We'll have a drink and celebrate."

"Celebrate what?"

"The miracle of your coming in here and actually _requesting_ a vacation without that scary woman of yours behind you holding one of your guns to your head."

"Is that how you see this – a miracle? I see it as more like flagellation. This has been fucking torture."

"The Lord works in mysterious ways."

"And always with attitude."

"Amen."

"Aw, man."

"I notice you didn't bother defending Miljana."

"I can't. It's the truth."

* * *

The lawyer that owed Tim lunch, Bradley Bachmeier, was about the same age as Tim, maybe a year or two older, a year or two younger. He looked younger, but that didn't mean anything except perhaps that he sat in an office all day and kept his fingernails clean and the sun off his skin. There was a vibe that Tim felt around him, that maybe this guy believed they were destined to be best buds because of the age thing, because Tim had been able to do him a favor. Tim tolerated him. It was convenient having a lawyer who believed in make-believe camaraderie.

"Where do you want to go for lunch?" He spoke fast, Bradley, walked fast, breathed fast, worked fast. He was fast getting annoying.

"Village Idiot." It should have been a question but Tim said it as if it were a statement. The jab was missed entirely.

"Perfect, yeah. I like that place. It's close."

"Great."

"Thanks again for tracking down that witness."

"It's kinda my job."

"Still, you could've brushed me off, or just pretended to make the effort – I know how these things work with you guys since, God knows, you've got enough to do without some lawyer asking you to track down some slacker – so I appreciate you showing up with him _on_ the trial date, not after, like I hear happens regularly. You know, I say, 'Hey buddy, can you track this guy down, he's on subpoena?' and you guys say, 'Yeah, no problem' and then you're left with your nuts hanging on trial date when the guy isn't in the courtroom and the judge is looking at you like you're a moron, so, you know, thanks."

"Yeah, no problem."

"Seriously, I owe you. It was my first biggie, you know? It's nice to start out ahead of the pack."

"Uh-huh."

"So, if there's anything I can do for you…"

The itch started again, a tickling between the brain stem and the cerebellum, and Tim started scratching behind his left ear, but it didn't help. Somewhere in his past was a time when he'd do something because he was told to, because it was his job and people relied on him, because he was duty-bound, to a point. It was simpler because the same basic things motivated him as motivated the guy beside him – survival, loyalty, pride. Simple feelings really. The court house scene was a little different, more of a 'what have you done for me lately?' kind of greasing that made him itch uncomfortably some days. Not that he wouldn't play the game with the rest of them, but it left a funny taste in his mouth, something sickly sweet. He preferred the sour metallic of do or die. Still, when in Rome… He sat across from his public defender best buddy and closed his eyes for a moment and focused on that itch, tried using a little mental imaging to scratch it. It didn't work. Tim figured it didn't work because the itch had a source, and the source was three words – snipers are cowards – and the fact that he knew that was the source meant that the only cure was to do something about it. He opened his eyes and jumped into the cesspool. Art and Miljana were not going to be happy.

"Yeah, I got a favor… Do you know Felicity Whitshaw?"

"The state attorney in Frankfort?"

"That's her."

"Yeah, not well, but…"

"Well enough to talk to her?"

"Sure."

"Then there is something you can do for me…"

It didn't seem like much of a favor when Tim outlined what he needed. The lawyer shrugged and said, "Sure thing. Can I ask why?"

"You just did. Do you have my phone number?"

"Yeah."

"I'm off for a few days. Call me when you've talked to her."

Tim finished his lunch, made the appropriate gestures of appreciation then escaped, excusing himself with a fabricated work-related errand. He was half a block down the street when he saw him, Craig Franklin, _snipers are cowards,_ philanthropist asshole, and it was too late to cross the street and pretend he didn't see him – Franklin saw Tim first.

"Lexington's just not fucking big enough," said Tim under his breath.

"Tim. Tim Gutterson, right? This is a lucky coincidence. I got a problem I'm hoping you can solve for me."

"You need a bodyguard?"

"Pardon?"

"Nothing."

"I'm hoping to recruit you because of your particular influence with someone that I need to convince of something. Miljana called me yesterday, said she couldn't work with us anymore. I'm so desperately disappointed. Do you think you could talk to her, get her to change her mind?"

"Nope. She does what she wants."

"Do you have any idea why she's quitting?"

"She's not _quitting._ She doesn't _quit._ She's moving on."

"Moving on to what though?"

"That's something you should ask _her,"_ said Tim. Keeping his anger in check meant not going there right now. "I gotta run. Work." He dodged Franklin and trotted across the street in a break in traffic, obliquely toward the court house, changed his mind halfway and turned back. Someone honked; Tim glared. Ducking into his coffee shop for some take-out, he ordered a large, texted Miljana while he waited for the woman to pour.

_Asshole on warpath. Expect a call._

_?_

_Wants to know why you quit._

_Mr. snipers are cowards? You saw him?_

Tim read the phrase, grimaced all over again, felt the anger stirring up that itch. _Yep._

_Shit. He's not calling me from the hospital I hope?_

"Here's your coffee, Deputy."

"Thank you, ma'am." The coffee smelled strong when Tim lifted it up for an appreciative sniff, just the way he liked it. He took his time fitting a lid on the cup, eyed the case of pastries, decided to buy something sweet to go with his beverage. "Can I get a slice of banana bread?"

"Chocolate chip or gluten-free pecan?"

"Oh, chocolate chip, of course." He counted out some change from his pocket and paid her. His phone buzzed, and in that buzz he could sense Miljana's agitation, impatience, concern. It was a loaded buzz. He grinned, set the coffee and his snack on the counter and read her text.

_Tim!?_

_What?_

_Dammit, he's fine, right? You didn't…?_

_LOL Messing with you. Assholes walking and talking. I'm not stupid._

: |

_Your sexy mad._

: *

The woman behind the counter was watching him. "Never a moment's peace with those things."

"I don't mind. She makes me laugh."

Miljana was still foremost in his thoughts when Tim arrived back at the Marshals Office, consequently in a good mood. Raylan was standing talking with Art, waved Tim over.

"Hey, Mathman, what's one plus one?"

"Two."

"Very good. You weren't lying about your super powers. And that's how many bad guys I got in one house. Take a ride with me. Art says you're free this afternoon."

"All right." Tim turned around mid-stride and headed back to the door.

"You boys be good," Art said, watching them leave.

Raylan caught up to Tim and held the door open for him. "Don't want you wearing your coffee."

"It's not a bad color on me, at least that's what Steve says."

"Steve?"

"Friend of Miljana's – you've met him."

"On your porch...Steve. Character, if I recall correctly."

"You recall correctly." Tim took a large bite of his banana bread, waved the remainder in front of Raylan, an offering.

"No thanks."

"Why does he say that?" Tim talked around his mouthful, waved the banana bread back toward the doors to the Marshals Office.

"Who?"

"Art."

"Say what?"

"'You boys be good.' Is he kidding?"

"I like to think of it as him giving us permission."

"How do you see that?"

"He's saying _be good_ at what you do."

"Even if it's being bad?"

"That's the way I interpret it."

Tim stuffed the last of his snack in his mouth, raised his eyebrows and nodded thoughtfully.

"Art was telling me about that guy saying 'snipers are cowards' in front of you." Raylan watched the numbers on the elevator run their course – two, one. "I shouldn't pay him any mind if I were you. Guys like that, they like to hear themselves talk, say something controversial so everyone will think they're clever, like they know something we all don't. My mama used to say, 'just 'cause everyone agrees don't make it true.' Well, the opposite holds too – just 'cause a statement makes a stir because it's different don't mean it's a revelation of a profound and hidden truth."

"Zen and the art of wearing a cowboy hat. You should write a book, Raylan, impart your wisdom to the world."

"Fine, be like that. Art wanted me to make sure you weren't gonna do something stupid."

"I figured."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Are you gonna do something stupid?"

"If I am, I'm gonna take a lesson from you and I'm gonna be good at it."

"Good...I guess." Raylan pulled out his keys, spun them on a finger while they walked. "What's his name?"

"Who?"

"Don't be obtuse, asshole."

"Why do you want to know?"

"So if he shows up dead, I'll know to divert the investigation away from you."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, I'm not gonna shoot him."

"Name."

"This is getting fucking…"

_"Name."_

"Craig Franklin."

"Was that so hard?"

* * *

 


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

"I thought you said you don't like dogs."

"I don't like _mean_ dogs. This is clearly not a mean dog – just look at that tail wagging."

The mutt being discussed, big and rangy, canine engines on full, had come barreling around the corner from the back of the house the second Raylan and Tim had stepped out of the car at the front. Tail like a propeller spinning out of control, the dog danced rather than ran, its hindquarters pulled into a bizarre version of a samba by the torque from the tail. When they saw the dog coming at them, the two marshals had stopped their approach, a sound bit of caution, routine, but what wasn't routine was that Tim hadn't pulled his sidearm and climbed the car at the first glimpse of the tongue and the teeth.

"A wagging tail don't necessarily mean he's not going to rip your throat out. Maybe he has nerve damage and he can't stop the wagging." Raylan wiggled his hand back and forth in imitation while keeping an eye on the dog's progress across the grass to the car. "Or maybe he's happy 'cause he likes biting people and he thinks you're kindly offering yourself up to feed his oral fixation."

"Then again, Raylan, maybe he's just a nice dog."

The dog finished its approach as Tim finished speaking. It jumped up when it reached them, not slowing first, and knocked Tim back into Raylan. Tim, grinning as Raylan shoved him upright again, took a knee, bringing himself to the dog's level, and accepted a good licking.

"See?" he said, ruffling the fur around the collar. "Nice dog."

"If you say so."

When Tim finally pushed it away, the dog turned to Raylan and stuffed his head in Raylan's crotch, the wagging tail keeping up its side of the samba routine.

"Nice dog," said Raylan, sidelong and long-suffering look at Tim, then he absently patted the dog's head using the hand that still held his sidearm, focus now back on the house. "Nice doggie. Now go on. Git."

It didn't git.

"C'mon boy." Scooping up a stick from the side of the road, Tim threw it across the yard and the dog chased it. "Now that's a proper dog," said Tim. "Licks, fetches, wags his tail."

"It's a she."

"You would be the one to notice."

The dog brought the stick back and dropped it at Tim's feet. Obliging, Tim picked the stick up and threw it again, and off ran the dog into a rollicking third verse of her samba with Tim chuckling amused at the contortions. The chuckling stopped abruptly and the sidearm came out when the door to the house opened and a frown and a shotgun walked out onto the stoop.

"This is getting to be a habit," said Raylan. "What's with this state and shotguns?"

The dog showed its loyalty then, drifted back near the porch steps and sat on its haunches, tail still wagging, flattening the grass in an arc behind it.

Tim eyed the figure at the door, lowered his Glock just a bit, twitched, said in an undertone to Raylan, "Is it Hallowe'en already?"

"No. That was two weeks ago."

Tim nodded.

"Why d'you ask?"

"She's dressed up like Courtney Love. Thought maybe it's Hallowe'en."

"She does bear a strong resemblance. Wonder if the Courtney Love attitude comes with the appearance. Ma'am?" Bringing up his left hand in a curt wave, Raylan turned his attention to the owner of the shotgun, brushed his jacket aside with his gun hand and tipped his hip forward to show the star on his belt, called across to the house. "US Marshals. Could you please put down the shotgun so we can have a friendly conversation? Just a few minutes of your time."

The woman lowered it about as much as Tim had lowered his gun – not much. "What d'you want?"

The voice made Raylan pause.

"I always suspected Courtney Love was a man. Now I'm sure of it," said Tim in a whisper.

"Maybe she's an alto."

"You mean a baritone."

Raylan gestured between himself and the house. "Can we come a little closer? Then we won't have to yell across the yard at you."

The baritone growled back. "If that's what you want."

"Was that a threat or an invitation or a dare?" said Tim, grimacing.

"Not sure."

"I don't think I want."

"Fine, stay here then, Tim, and play fetch with your new friend." Raylan slipped his sidearm back in his holster and started across the grass. Tim followed, but Glock still out, eyes watching the barrel of the hostile shotgun for any sign of intent.

The dog's tail was still wagging.

"Nice dog you got," said Raylan, pleasant smile, easy stance at the foot of the porch steps.

"She's stupid, is what she is. Worst watchdog ever, playing fetch with Federals. I asked you what you want. So what d'you want?"

"We're looking for Teddy Newton. He around?"

"Haven't seen him in over a week. His rent's due."

"He and his cousin both room here?"

"That's right."

"Cousin around?"

"Haven't seen him neither."

"And his rent's due, too?"

"Good guess."

Raylan smiled wider. "I like that shade of lipstick on you."

"Don't flatter me. I know what you're thinking – it's weird, a man dressed up like a woman."

Tim stepped up, waded in. "I just think it's weird you going for Courtney Love and not, I dunno, around here, maybe Taylor Swift? Or Loretta Lynn if you wanna work the older crowd."

"You think I look like Courtney Love?"

"Yep."

Courtney set down the shotgun, swooped down the steps with surprising grace, took Tim's face in his hands, and planted a kiss on Tim's left cheek. "Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. That's exactly what I'm going for. No one around here even knows who she is. Everyone says I look like a bad imitation of Marilyn Monroe. But this here," a broad sweep of his hand, head to toe, a runway turn, "is Courtney Love. I mean, anyone could see that who knows her."

Tim, eyes wide in horror, was too stunned to reply, stood stiffly at attention with a slight lean backward, away from Courtney.

"Tim, now don't shoot," said Raylan, hand out, smirk out. "I still have some questions for, uh, Miss Love."

"Name's Kurt."

"I might've guessed."

"So what do you want with Teddy?"

Raylan started his list of questions about Teddy Newton and Kurt shrugged his way through most of them while Tim played fetch with the dog, whose name, it turns out, was Hole. The conversation ended the way the Marshals' conversations usually did, with a card given and a "Thank you for your time. If you think of anything else or you happen to see him…"

Kurt smiled and took the card on offer, picked up his shotgun and swished back into the house. Hole followed the Marshals to their car, tail still wagging, though more rumba now than samba.

"Tim, you got some lipstick…" Raylan gestured at his cheek over the roof of the car, then pointed at Tim. "It's a good color on you, though. Nice red."

"Shut up," said Tim, pulled his sleeve over his hand and started rubbing violently at the evidence.

"Lipstick and dog spit – how are you gonna explain that to your girl when you get home tonight?"

Tim got in the car and went on the offensive in response. "Teddy Newton works at the Buffalo Trace Distillery. Why do I get the feeling that this has nothing to do with whatever you're chasing this week in Harlan and everything to do with sixty-five cases of stolen bourbon?"

"How do you know he works there?"

"I read the theft report yesterday after Art and I got back from the tour, ran through the list of employees. What're you up to, Raylan?"

"Oh, just poking around. Don't worry – Art knows." Raylan pulled onto the road.

"He get another Marshal woody over this?"

"Sixty-five cases of missing bourbon will do that. Though I'm not sure about Art's motives – glory or an opportunity for some high-end drinking. Could be either, or both. Anyway, he and I agreed we should do a little picking at the haystack, just on the chance we get lucky. I asked Boyd about the theft yesterday – I was down in Harlan on other business, but it didn't seem right to waste the opportunity of seeing if he'd heard anything."

Tim twisted in his seat, curious, gave Raylan his full attention. "What did Boyd say about it?"

"He said, 'Well, Raylan, anyone who has ever indulged in the sweet respite of a sip of Kentucky's very own original homegrown drug, and here understand that I am not referring to marijuana but alcohol, knows about the theft of that venerable vintage, and will surmise without too much mental strain, as I have, that it was an inside job. You are going to have to find the bourbon to find the bandit; find the proof to find the proof, so to speak.'"

"You're actually quoting him, aren't you?"

"I couldn't make that shit up."

"Did he say anything else?"

"We discussed it. He made some suggestions, nothing the locals hadn't already come up with – stuff like looking into who has access to the warehouse, 'cause it was under lock and key and no sign of breaking and entering. And how would you move that many bottles, 'cause sure as hell the guy's doing it for profit not personal consumption. Anyway, he said that Teddy here used to haul weed for the Bennetts, though never got arrested or charged so no record, and now he works for the distillery. Once a thief…"

"Good theory, unless it was actually Art that stole it and he's got you chasing your tail to keep you off the real scent."

"That thought did cross my mind. He's still in my top five list of suspects."

"We should go check his basement."

"We're not far from his place."

They passed the turnoff to Art's neighborhood at that moment, two heads turning to look, eyes narrowed. But Raylan didn't stop.

"Art tells me you're off for a week starting tomorrow?"

"Yep."

"Why don't you wait a bit, chase this thing with me?"

"Nah, I got something that needs looking after."

"Now that sounds secretive."

Tim didn't respond.

"'Snipers are cowards' takes precedence over a gold mine of Old Pappy?"

"I admit, it was a tough call."

Raylan nodded, understanding. "Let me know if there's anything I can do for you."

"Save me a bottle."

"Can't promise you that, not if Art gets to it first."

"Greedy bastard."

"Kurt seems like a nice fellow. Warmed right up to you. Takes a different kind of brave to do _that_ in a small town."

"What? You mean kiss a Deputy Marshal with his gun out, or dress like Courtney Love?"

"I mean dress like a woman with a voice that belies the lipstick."

" _I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not."_

"Are you quoting again?"

"Kurt Cobain."

Raylan gave some back. _"I feel that sin and evil are the negative part of you, and I think it's like a battery – you've got to have the negative and the positive in order to be a complete person."_

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Nothing. It's a segue."

"Who said it?"

"Dolly Parton."

"Nice bit of philosophy to live by. Are you explaining yourself for my benefit?"

"Didn't work on Winona, either. Anyway, I love that woman, Dolly Parton, I mean. She also said she never met a man she didn't like. I wish I could say the same."

Both men frowned as they considered the cross-section of the population that Raylan was referring to, that they routinely, as Deputy US Marshals, had to deal with.

"Yeah, he did seem like a nice guy," said Tim, "though I question his taste in role models. Courtney Love?"

"She's certainly a character."

"So's Daffy Duck."

"What's your point?"

"Better role model."

"Hm."

* * *

 


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

"Gentlemen." Art called a greeting from the photocopier, strolled over when Tim and Raylan came through the doors. He was trying hard to look uninterested, casual, blithe, blasé, but it wasn't working.

Tim pointed at Art's crotch. "Your marshal woody's showing."

Art couldn't check the head movement in time, dropping his chin for a look where Tim was pointing. Tim grinned, snorted, dodged the swat aimed at him, slipped past his boss and flopped into his chair.

"I'm not hiring any more Rangers – too much potty mouth."

"You're just mad 'cause I made you look."

"Nothing," said Raylan, stopping the war before it could get started, answering the question before it was asked. He shrugged for Art. "Got nothing. The guy hasn't shown up at his place for a bit. Landlord couldn't tell us much."

"What's a bit?"

"At least a week."

"He hasn't shown up at work _for a bit_ either," said Tim. "Called in sick last Thursday."

"How do you know that?"

Tim sighed, like his life was stuck in a loop, a loop occupied solely by him and Raylan, a repetition of action and reaction and then this phrase in a bored tone: "I read the report."

"Maybe you should start reading reports," said Art, a curt nod to his senior deputy.

"Why would I bother?" said Raylan. "I got Tim."

Tim gave him the thumbs up, head in another report now open in front of him that he'd pulled from his desk drawer.

"But he's gonna be away for a week, Raylan. Who's gonna do it when he's vacationing?"

"I guess I'll have to struggle by without him. You can't imagine how empty and sad it'll feel without him here to give me grief along with that annoying and smug look for not reading," Raylan waved a dismissive hand, "whichever goddamn report I should have read that day, followed by him spewing facts from said goddamn report that are only marginally useful at the time that he decides to share."

Tim turned the thumbs up into a one-fingered salute. "Nice to know my work is appreciated. Read your own said goddamn reports from now on."

"What, and miss out on all this pleasant personal interaction?"

Most days at the office, Art would step in and stop the spitball fights that always erupted between Tim and Raylan when they weren't neck-deep in a case or being shot at by someone not connected to the office. The rancorous back and forth was generally amusing for anyone within earshot, for the first ten minutes anyway, and then it invariably became uncomfortable, at least to all but the combatants who appeared to enjoy it considering how often they chose to engage. But Art was only half-listening to the spat, caught up in his Walter Mitty-esque dreams of unveiling to the world the missing Pappy. He really was disappointed that Raylan and Tim hadn't arrived back with a truckload of fine whiskey for his office to display to the world.

"So, no leads then?"

"No, Art. No leads."

"Well, shit."

The next spitball flew over at Tim from Raylan's trench. "Hey, Tim, what _are_ you gonna do with your week besides drink and shoot? Maybe you'd like to take some reports home to read?"

"No, thank you. I got plans."

"Plans?"

Tim sat back, smiled. "I'm a go _huntin'."_

"I thought you said you didn't care much for hunting anymore?"

Tim shrugged. "Good time of year for it."

"Oh, yeah? What's in season?"

"Fresh air, a walk in the woods, my best rifle by my side."

"So no particular game in mind?"

Tim ignored the question.

" _There is no hunting like the hunting of man…"_ said Raylan. "Hemingway, right?"

"Aw, you remembered. And I thought you were all about pop culture – Dolly Parton and Elmore Leonard."

Art seemed to catch up to them then, sliding the bottle of bourbon away in its box in his dreams for the time being. "Should I be amazed that you two are discussing Hemingway? You did say Hemingway, right?"

"Fine, let's discuss Dolly Parton then since Art's back with us," said Tim. "She's fun." He screwed up his face, remembering. "What was it you said she said, Raylan? – something about batteries and positive and negative needed in a person to get energy going or something..."

"Well that certainly sums you up." Art delivered the comment along with a hard slap on Raylan's shoulder.

"Like I said, I love that woman." Raylan let the momentum from Art's slap carry him to his desk where he leaned over his computer screen to pick up a stack of phone messages and sort through them.

The show was winding down, and Art strolled away bored, back to gather the papers he'd left at the copier, then into his office and around behind his desk. He dropped into his chair, straightened the papers in his hand and set them in a neat pile next to another stack, then stopped, staring without reading, a frown forming. His head snapped up suddenly, eyes narrowed in the direction of Tim's desk. Back out into the bullpen, he reappeared in front of his deputy with surprising speed, finger pointed in accusation.

"Who?"

"What?"

"Who exactly are you hunting? Is it that philanthropist guy? I should've figured you were up to something when you came asking for vacation time without prompting."

Tim turned his head and glared at Raylan.

Raylan responded. "What? I was just quoting Hemingway, trying to class up the office. I didn't say anything about your plans."

Art jumped on the last word. "Plans?"

Tim logged out of his computer, picked up his bag and jammed a folder into it.

"Tim, what's in that folder?"

"Personal shit, boss. It's five. I'm on vacation. Bye."

"I can take that vacation back."

"I can complain to HR."

"You go right ahead. I'll set you up for that psych eval and tell them about that target."

"What target? I have no idea what you're talking about."

Raylan watched from his seat in the peanut gallery, smiling contentedly.

"Don't you deny it, now. I make a damn good witness."

"Hearsay. Burden of proof will be on you."

"Tim…"

"Chief, what do you think I'm gonna do this week? I'm on vacation. I'm gonna take my time drinking my coffee in the morning, clean my guns, catch up with some buddies from the Regiment, then I'm gonna sua sponte some shit that needs sua sponte-ing. It's all good. Go find some bourbon or something. Call me if you need me." Tim sprinted for the stairs, wanting to get clear of the building before Art could translate the Latin.

"What'd he say? Is he suing somebody? Does 'snipers are cowards' count as defamation? I don't think it does if it's not personally aimed."

"I missed it, Art. Wasn't listening. I was happily contemplating an entire week without Tim Guttermouth."

"I'm sure he'll miss you, too."

"Uh-huh."

* * *

Gun oil. And underneath that…bacon?

"Tim?"

And cheese. The music was loud for a Tuesday night, Tool playing, _Lateralus_. Tim hadn't played that album in a while, not since the last time his sniper buddy, Tim Weaver, had appeared for a weekend between jobs for the CIA. Miljana pulled out her cell phone, camera ready, toed out of her shoes and tiptoed down the hall to the kitchen hoping to find the two Tims doing something stupid, and amusing, and incriminating. There was always an opportunity for blackmail whenever Weaver was visiting. She liked him despite herself, despite the fact that she suspected he had sociopathic tendencies. He, at least, was a functioning sociopath, and loyal to a fault with her Tim, and very entertaining, and fortunately out of the country for most of the year.

She peeked around the corner into the kitchen, anticipation making her grin, a bit giddy, but there was only one Tim, her Tim, sitting at the table with his new favorite handgun in pieces, his laptop open, a folder of papers spread out, and his folding knife and boot knife laying beside a whetstone. On the chair next to him was a rucksack, open and partially packed and sitting squarely at attention waiting for more.

She felt an odd mix of disappointment and relief that he was alone; trepidation and amusement at the scene set before her. While she watched him studying intently an image on Google Maps satellite view, she decided that it was the music that was the source of her unease. It was his Ranger music. He had all the Tool albums, but the latter two, _Lateralus_ and _10,000 Days,_ were his Ranger albums. He'd even said as much when it had accidentally come up on iTunes once on a chore-filled Saturday, teasing out from his memory a detailed description of his room in the barracks, and a funny story involving a large blow-up bowling pin and a skateboard in the hallway connecting the rooms, a story that may or may not have included a case of Jameson and some Skittles. The bottle on the table currently wasn't Jameson, but…

"Hey, sweetie. What are you up to?"

Tim twisted to face her, reached over and shut his laptop at the same time, pulled his rucksack off the chair and set it, suspiciously pulling it closed first, on the floor beside the table, all smoothly, casually, before standing up and walking over and kissing her.

"Didn't hear you come in," he said.

"Not surprised. I could hear the tunes from my office."

"Dinner?"

"You cooked?"

"Big, Bad Bacon Mac 'N Cheese. I'm gonna bourbon and bacon you to death, remember?"

"That sounds awful-ly good. And it smells dangerous. You didn't put gun oil in it, did you?"

"Nope."

"Bourbon?"

"That's the side dish."

"Oh."

"Cheese bread." He gestured at the counter, enticing her to look.

"We've got a perfectly good bread knife," she said. "Or maybe you were using your boot knife on the veggies that I'm sure you've got prepared to go with dinner?"

Tim walked back to the table and swiped up the knives and sharpener and slipped them into the rucksack on the floor. "I got salad in a bag," he said.

"Brilliant."

"I got the recipe for the mac 'n cheese from the new cookbook. It was the easiest one in it. Thought I'd work my way up to the Bourbon and Bacon Waffles – maybe Saturday morning? – then Bourbon Molasses Braised Porkbelly with Fried Oysters for Sunday night."

"Mm. And the recipe for disaster?"

"What?"

"Tim…"

Innocent just would not stick on his face. "What?"

"Do I look stupid? I must look stupid. How have I been managing all these years through college and interning and then…all the time looking really stupid? I'm amazed you stayed with me. Was it pity?"

"Fuck, you really do sound like Art some days. I fucking married my boss."

"Imagine how that sounds to a psychologist."

"Imagine how that feels to me."

"What are you up to?"

"I got some time off, like we talked about. I'm just cleaning some of my…"

Miljana hung her head. "It _was_ pity. I'm devastated. I look at myself in the mirror every morning. How could I miss how stupid I must look?"

Tim shut his mouth, pressed his lips into a line, head dipped to the right, eyes narrowed. "I should've stayed away from you."

"You don't mean that."

Tim took a step toward her, arms out, inviting. Miljana took two steps backward, arm up, blocking.

A huff of surrender. "Okay. So I think he's smuggling."

"Franklin?"

"Yep."

"Tim…" Miljana blew a soft and defeated raspberry, flapped her arms like a penguin disgusted to discover that it's actually cold in the Antarctic. "Do you really think he's doing something illegal, or do you _want_ him to be doing something illegal?"

"Oh, he's definitely doing something illegal. Where's all his money coming from? I'm gonna have some fun this vacation, play like I'm in the recce platoon. I always thought it'd be cool. If I'd stayed in, I might've asked to go that way. I got to go out with them a couple of times when they wanted a sniper along. I enjoyed it, sneaking around for a few days. I think I've got the right personality for it – I'm patient, detail-oriented, and I can grow a decent beard." He rubbed his evening stubble and grinned.

"Tim…"

"I'd love to catch him at it, and I'm gonna try. Did you know he's got a little estate in the hills east of here? Nicely hidden away."

"Tim…"

"How about some mac 'n cheese and a bourbon?"

She left the question hanging while she considered the man in front of her. "He's invited me to his office tomorrow…for a chat."

"For a chat? Right. You going?"

"I feel I owe him that."

"Sure, whatever."

"Will you explain why you think he's bad – other than the stupid 'snipers are cowards' comment – while I stuff the calories in? If you can convince me, I won't try to stop you."

Tim's response was interrupted by his phone, incoming call. He picked it up off the table and peered at the number then answered it.

"Gutterson. – Hey, Mr. Bradley Bachmeier. What d'you got for me? – Really? Can you email me a copy? – Sure, a picture'll do it. Send it through on the phone, then you can stop thanking me for rounding up that witness. I think we're even. – What's that? – Oh I think the value of the favor is determined by the receiver, not the giver. This is what I was hoping you'd find when you talked to Ms. Whitshaw. – Yep. Okay. – Bradley, I'm hanging up now." And he did, then he grinned at Miljana, tossed the phone next to his handgun, his expression making it clear that the news he'd just received made the pending result of the dinner conversation favorable to him. "You got a deal," he said. "I'll walk you through what I know while we eat."

It wasn't in her to feel defeated, just fated, and she rationalized his win away by telling herself that it was already a done deal, the week's lineup decided long before she was even aware of the possibility of it. She walked to the counter and poked at the cheese bread. It looked tasty. She took a deep breath in and got a nose full of gun oil, turned and smiled. "You smell like gun oil. I find it weirdly sexy. I hate to think what that says about me...so I won't...think about it." Spreading her arms out wide, she offered her lips for a kiss. "Come here, my cowardly sniper."

* * *

 


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

Tim set down his rucksack and his rifle, pulled out a water bottle and a granola bar then sat on the rock he'd stopped beside, conveniently chair height, and took a long drink. He didn't linger to enjoy the spot, two bites to finish his snack and then he tucked the wrapper and the half-full water bottle back into his bag, opened the terrain map he had slipped from his jacket pocket and studied it, counting peaks and troughs. He was almost there. Standing again and hoisting his pack, he moved easily up to the crest of the hill he was on and then down the other side without hesitating. Noting the creek at the bottom, exactly where it should be according to his map, he stepped over it and started up the next hill.

Tim was happy. Tim was on vacation, a vacation in the style and location of his choosing, hiking off-road with a rifle and his new handgun and a survival kit – two knives, a disposable lighter, terrain map, compass, GPS, rope, quick and protein-loaded snacks, water, good boots, day-old beard, and a purpose.

Even without a purpose to this walk, Tim would have enjoyed it, and though he was determined to reach his destination before lunch, and set the pace to accomplish that, he still allowed himself breaks in his focus to appreciate the woods, quiet, solitary, everything on his schedule. But the purpose of it added some sharpness, a tang of expectation, gave it energy, a literal point. Tim liked being outside, but Sunday strolls just didn't do it for him, not when you could have a Sunday stroll in the form of a Wednesday fast march with an objective.

The last incline on his route was longer and shallower than the previous few, tipping him off that he was approaching his objective. He slowed, walking now more carefully, aware of what was underfoot to shift or snap or make any sound at all that might carry through the bare branches of the season. Twenty feet from the top, he dropped his rucksack again, nestling it under a shrub. The woodland camouflage of the bag's fabric made it almost impossible to see, but he kicked a few leaves up around the sides to blur the outline anyway, disguise the shape, and continued on with just his rifle. Near the top he hunched down into a crouch, moving sideways on the backside of the slope until he found a small clump of trees to hide behind before cresting the hill. The objective was right where he expected it to be thanks to his land navigation skills, and his target, Craig Franklin, hopefully was too. Tim had it on good authority that Franklin was in his office in Lexington right about now having _a chat_ with a psychologist about his charity organization.

Pulling binoculars from a jacket pocket, Tim made himself comfortable and became acquainted with the rough-hewn but clearly luxurious log-house style residence below him, the outbuildings and the surrounding terrain. Satisfied that he was alone, he slung his rifle over his shoulder and trotted down the hill for a closer look.

There wasn't much to see in the house, except the modern alarm system that Tim swore at through a window and thought of Wynn Duffy, wondered if his company had installed it. He walked the perimeter, peering inside wherever possible, then strode over to the separate garage, picked the lock at the small side entrance, stepped in and found a light switch. Tim was more a mechanic than a carpenter, but even he could appreciate the woodworking shop set up inside, complete enough to put the set of the New Yankee Workshop to shame. He did a tour of the space, admiring the tools, then stood at one end and scowled, frustrated – there was no secret smuggler's room anywhere, unless it was hidden in the basement of the no-go, security-infested main house. So, he'd have to go about it the hard way, a few days surveillance and hopefully something to move on. He locked the garage, and wandered a bit aimlessly around the property, stopping eventually at the front and letting just his eyes take a tour. They flicked twice over the ground in front of the garage and then came back to the area a third time, settling with interest on the fresh tire tracks leading right up to and underneath the main doors, odd because there was no room in that workshop for a vehicle. Tim checked his watch, then picked the lock of the garage a second time and went back in for a more careful inspection.

* * *

Miljana was wearing the boyfriend sweater again, but this time in full public view, out on the street. She walked up South Limestone from the university campus then west toward Triangle Park where Craig 'snipers-are-cowards' Franklin was waiting in his Lexington office, a second floor loft over a row of trendy shops, hipsterville strip as Tim called it. She felt singularly conspicuous in the hoodie, exposed, as if she'd been caught out in a lie or had bared a secret and guilty pleasure for all to mock. Walking a bit stiffly, a quick pace, she avoided making eye contact with anyone, praying she wouldn't pass someone she knew professionally because, truthfully, being an obvious hypocrite bothered her less than being the cute girlfriend, and that admission to herself bothered her more than anything else.

A noise of disgust escaped her as she read her own thoughts and she said in her mind the word _hypocrite_ to scold herself, then tried to distract her brain with the unlikely scenario of passing a real Army Ranger, someone other than Tim. He might call her out as a fraud, which would be amusing since it was reasonably common knowledge that there were no women in the Ranger Regiment. So no angry accusations of stolen valor, more likely a condescending grin and then the question, "Which battalion does _your boyfriend_ serve in?" And then she'd definitely be the cute girlfriend, out there for all the world to see. _Hypocrite,_ she scolded again, and then answered the pretend question. "Third," she'd say and then try to convey something of the independent and educated woman that she was, wearing her boyfriend's hoodie only because she had a job to do this lunch hour that required it. And this make-believe Ranger would likely miss all those cues and focus only on what was on his mind, asking questions to try and figure out if he'd ever crossed paths with Tim, the boyfriend of the cute girlfriend in the boyfriend sweater, questions like what year Tim signed up, what year he left, which platoon he was assigned to, who the cadre sergeants were in RIP when he went through… She wouldn't even matter to him, the cute girlfriend.

 _Stop it!_ she growled at her insecurities, but they jeered and slapped her back with a reality check, that the likelihood of a chance meeting with a veteran of the 75th Regiment on a street in Lexington was slim to none, and then they berated her, bringing up more insecurities in support of the attack, for being embarrassed in advance of a fictional encounter. She cursed her imagination, grumped to herself that her confidence should be able to withstand being just a girlfriend for fifteen minutes, beat herself up with the reminder that Tim, unlike her, happily wore the UK sweatshirt she'd bought him. All the while her walk became more and more aggressive until people she approached were instinctively moving out of her way, all five-feet-four threatening inches of her. When she arrived at Craig Franklin's office, she was angry at herself and ready to take it out on the asshole inside, and to top the mood, no one had taken any notice of what goddamn sweater she was wearing.

"Idiot," she breathed, then jabbed the buzzer.

"Dr. Miljana Čajić." Craig Franklin greeted her, saying her name with obsequious perfection, pissing her off more than Tim could when he purposely mispronounced it, imitating Art's car wreck version and getting right up in her face when she was grumpy. "Čajić," she'd yell back at him, putting on her inherent Serbian accent, and he'd mangle it more in response, Kentucky consonants scraping against overstated Kentucky vowels until she couldn't keep a straight face any longer and broke into giggles. "Better not say it like that around my father," she'd say, and Tim would do it on purpose next family visit and grin at her, and her father, God love him, would spend the rest of the evening indulging himself with a bizarrely Slavic version of Timothy Gutterson. "That just sounds gay," would be Tim's reaction and they'd all laugh, Miljana's gay uncle laughing with them.

She shook thoughts of Tim laughing out of her head and focused on Tim angry, revisited his face when Franklin said, "Snipers are cowards," and she forced a smile for her host. "Hello, Craig," she said. "The answer's still no."

"Aw. But you haven't let me run my spiel yet. Have a seat. Would you like something to drink? I don't often indulge in hard liquor at lunch but I understand that your husband has turned you into a whiskey drinker. I have something special here to tempt you."

He produced a bottle of Old Pappy from inside a cabinet, presented it like a prize. "Uh? Can you say no to this?"

She tried not to stare, remembering Tim's story about he and Art visiting the distillery where this bourbon was aged and barreled and stolen. _Does everyone think I'm stupid?_ The thought zipped through her head when she caught the bottling date on the label, this very year, the stolen batch year. "No," she said, "tempting as it is. I don't drink when I'm working. I have clients this afternoon. I think, though, that Tim would love to get his hands on a bottle of that."

"I'm sure he would."

Rather than take the offered seat, she turned and walked to the large window overlooking the park, let him read the back of her boyfriend sweater.

"Do you have family in the military?"

She turned around coyly, a what-are-you-talking-about expression.

"Rangers?" He pointed at the sweater.

"Oh." And she smiled, twisting in a pretense of reading the logo on the back of the hoodie. "It's Tim's. I grabbed it out of the car before I came. I decided to walk but it's colder out than I thought."

"He was with the Rangers?"

"Yes. Afghanistan. He was a sniper."

She was pleased to see the effect the pronouncement had on him.

* * *

"Fuck me."

Tim laughed out loud, a full and honest and profound laugh, surprise and satisfaction and pure and simple happiness. There _was_ a smuggler's room, a trap door well-hidden under the center work table leading to a cellar hollowed out below, and that alone was enough to bring the chuckle bubbling up from somewhere down deep where the four-year-old pirate still dwelt inside him. But it was the stack of twenty-year-old Pappy van Winkle Reserve that put the hard flint in the laugh, made it more real, and that sound came from a little closer to the surface, the rough outer layer of Ranger veteran and Deputy US Marshal. He did a quick count and it came up a few short of the sixty-five missing cases. He raised his eyebrows, grinned. There was no way in hell, even if he ended up in hell, that he was climbing out of this pit and walking out of this garage without a case of that bourbon tucked under his arm. It took him a split second to come to that decision and about five minutes to rearrange the pile so that his one case wouldn't be missed.

Mark Twain said, "There is no such thing as too much good whiskey," and Tim agreed. But he wasn't about to get greedy – three bottles would do.

He locked the garage, covered his tracks and headed back to his hill with his three bottles of ninety-point-four proof, five-star collector's bourbon, and a contented smile. This sniper would be sipping something fine this evening. While he climbed the hill, he toyed with the idea of coming clean with Art and sharing, rejected the thought after a full minute's consideration, certain that Art would make him return it. He felt badly about keeping it all to himself for another minute, and then got over it and got to work, spending the remainder of the afternoon setting up a hide. He would return home tonight, enjoy the evening and sip some whiskey with Miljana, then come back tomorrow and hunker down and see what other treasure might turn up.

* * *

 


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

Still wearing the boyfriend sweater, a healthy _fuck you_ to her insecurities, Miljana ran up the front steps, taking them two at a time. The tunes were blaring again today and she pulled up short on the porch listening to the music. It was an odd choice for Tim. She didn't even know they owned a copy of the _Guardians of the Galaxy_ soundtrack, _Awesome Mix #1._ She danced a little when the track _Come and Get Your Love_ started up, feeling good about doing something for Tim today. He never asked for much, independent shit that he was. She kept dancing her way into the front hall, called out his name and Tim answered with a "Hey," boogieing his way to the door to greet her.

Tim Weaver, CIA operator, not Tim Gutterson, owner of the boyfriend sweater.

Weaver was doing a convincing version of the opening alien world scene from the movie, lip-syncing and spinning. "My new favorite movie!" he said, calling down the hall as he danced, hilarious gyrations and hip thrusts. "I downloaded the soundtrack for you!"

Miljana stopped when she saw him, but Weaver didn't, continuing down the hall and sweeping her up in his dance moves, pulling her around in circles then back down the hall toward the kitchen. Even with the room spinning, Miljana could see that her Tim wasn't home.

"How did you get my password to download it?" She had to scream to be heard above the wall of '70s sound.

"What?"

"Never mind. Do I need to get a security system?"

"No. It's okay. I'm here. No one's likely to break in during the day when someone's home."

She disengaged herself from her dance partner who kept up the disco, not missing a beat, then she sidestepped to the kitchen table and shifted the morning paper, snatched up a remote, aimed it and turned the music down a notch. "That's kind of my point," she said, and it came out very loudly.

"Oh." Tim Weaver looked hurt, a faked hurt, then sly. "You could give me a key."

"Why bother?"

"Yeah, I guess. I have to admit, it is kinda fun breaking in." He grinned wickedly. "Nice hoodie," he said. "You look so cute in it."

"Shut up! Don't go there, just don't!"

Tim Weaver's eyes opened wide and he put his arms up and took a step away from Miljana. "Backing up slowly, submissive posture."

"Grrr."

"The alpha predator proclaims her dominance."

"Fuck off," she said, laughing now, unable to help herself. "Just fuck off about the sweater. How have you been, Tim? We've missed you…sort of."

"No." Finger to his lips, then frantically waving, chasing away some voodoo, Tim said, "Tim is no more. Call me…Stella."

The bizarre fake name-calling routine was actually becoming routine to Miljana now. She recognized that it was Tim Weaver's way of dealing with being a non-person in his black-ops role with the CIA. And it helped with the confusion when he was visiting, no Tim/Tim mix-ups. "You didn't even have to think about that," she said. "You already had it picked out."

"I've had an hour or two to come up with it."

"I like it – Stella. It suits you somehow." She drifted around the house while she talked, peering into corners, looking for a rucksack or a pair of boots, sniffing for gun oil, hoping.

Tim watched her. "Where's Timtoo? You thought he'd be home, didn't you? He's not answering his phone."

"He's supposed to be killing me with bourbon and bacon this week."

"That sounds like a porn movie plot."

"A bit like, I think. Speaking of bourbon, can I get you a drink?"

"Another one? Sure."

"Beer, bourbon…something else?"

"Beer would be great, but only if you'll join me."

"Oh, sure, what the hell. Don't I always drink on Wednesdays?" She opened two bottles and they stood looking at each other, alone together in the house for the first time. "I don't think Tim's making dinner tonight," she said. "Why don't we go to the burger place at the corner when he gets back?"

"Mmm…burger. He working?"

"No, he's off today." She chewed on her lip and paced the house again looking for a clue that Tim had been home. "He's sua sponte-ing something, he said." She ended up back in the kitchen, clueless.

"Ooh, that sounds like fun."

"Yeah. No. Not really."

"How long do we wait?"

"Until I get hungry, or start worrying, whichever comes first."

"Cool."

"So, Stella, what have you been up to?"

"Can't tell you or I'd have to kill you, and that'd piss Tim off."

"I suspect it would. Where's your beard gone?"

"I'm back for a few months – training and shit. Thought I'd take the opportunity to get rid of the crawlies."

Miljana's eyes flicked up to the high and very tight hair, then back to the wicked grin. She wasn't sure whether he was serious or not, probably not, maybe… She took a sip of her beer and thought fondly back to a time in her life before military and law enforcement and secret spy shit.

* * *

Tim was putting the final touches on his hide when he heard the vehicles. He crouched down out of sight and watched them pull into the laneway to the house, four of them, white SUVs, serious looking. Ducking down quickly, he slipped into position and set up his rifle and peered through the scope, scanning for license plates and faces.

His nest was set a hundred yards from the back corner of the house, up the rise. This gave him a clear line of sight to the front and side entrances of the garage which had been built perpendicular to the entrance to the property, and it also gave him easy observation of the goings-on in the log cabin, with its open-concept design and large windows across the back for a view of the woods.

The doors of the first two vehicles opened and five men climbed out of each, positioning themselves along the convoy in traditional military security fashion, setting up at fives and twenty-fives. There were weapons visible, at the ready, assault rifles, and handguns likely concealed under bulging jackets, but it was the sight of the men spreading out in so familiar a pattern that sent a chill through Tim and he pulled himself more tightly into his space. It was too late now to extricate himself from the situation, so he wriggled down into the leaves he'd collected, sinking a little lower into the ground. Reaching slowly out to the side, he finished his covering, carefully sliding the branches that he'd set close by over his legs. He hadn't felt it necessary to be so fussy with his screen, but he was grateful now that he'd let his training and caution take over earlier, especially when five more men stepped out of the fourth car, each carrying an assault rifle of his own and carrying it like he knew which end was which. That made fifteen in total. They moved to join the others, leaving six with the vehicles while the rest split into three groups of three, forming into patrols and heading up the hills surrounding the house, two toward the ridge he was hiding on.

"Fuck," said Tim, just a breath, lips hardly moving. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

Inching his right hand down his side, he unclipped and pulled his handgun from his thigh holster and brought it back up near his chin, then he lay very still, breathing slowly, as one group passed barely an inch in front of his camouflaged rifle barrel. The men settled into three positions on the hilltops forming a triangle, a group on either side of Tim, covering the back corners of the house, and the last in front with a view of the road in. One of the armed men still at the convoy opened the door on the last vehicle and a suited man stepped out and looked around.

Money, thought Tim, and he took a good look at the face, curious. It was Asian, confident. A second man climbed out of the car, less confidence, definitely less Asian. In fact, Tim recognized this face. It was Wynn Duffy.

* * *

Miljana put out some chips and salsa, and she and Tim Weaver discussed the situation in Crimea until finally she took the last mouthful of her second beer and slammed the bottle on the counter. She eyed the clock, then Tim's friend, then said, "How about a burger? I'm starving."

"Did you know they've calculated that the average person spends six months of their life waiting at red lights?"

"What?"

"You're worried, not hungry. If you were just hungry, that fact would make you furious. Burger sounds good though. _I'm_ hungry."

"I'll just leave Tim a note."

"Waste of ink if you ask me." He turned to look at the time.

The clock squirmed, getting more attention than it was used to on a Wednesday night.

"Eight-thirty," said Miljana. "I couldn't possibly nurse a third beer without some food."

"Burgers then – Stella's treat," said Weaver. "And don't worry about Tim. I'm sure he's fine."

"I'm worried."

"I know. And that's why you're going to have a burger with me and tell me what you think Tim's doing and then you're going to go to bed and pretend to get some sleep and I'm going to go find him. And if my opinion is worth anything then trust me, he's fine."

"I know you, Tim, and I know what you do for a living. So your opinion is worthless."

"Well, I was going to say, either he's fine or he's dead. Either way, no point worrying."

"Can you imagine a situation where you might honestly start worrying?"

"Hell, yeah. I thought I got this girl pregnant once…"

"And you have no filters."

"Filters take a lot of energy."

Miljana huffed and the penguin arms came out, flapping nervously. "Tim's gone hunting."

"Hunting. Sounds pretty harmless. Do you know where?"

"I think so."

"Do you know _what_ he's hunting?"

"A philanthropist."

"Really? I didn't know they were in season. Are they dangerous?"

"I didn't think so."

Miljana looked at the clock again. It blushed an eight-thirty-five.

* * *

The hours passed, dark now and cold. The men would take turns walking a route which took them spitting distance from Tim, and back. Tim was regretting that he hadn't had time to tuck some food and water into his hiding spot. The initial fear of being caught had been driven away by frustration and discomfort. By ten he had a routine down, shifting to relieve muscles and joints when a breeze would rustle the leaves and hide his movements, in between patrol passes. A few more hours and he decided to risk getting into the only liquid he had with him, just to wet his tongue. There was a bottle of the Old Pappy hidden in the leaves near his face, keeping him company, a temptation. He had pulled it out of the case after he'd carried it up the hill, just to hold it, run his hands over the glass and read the label and gloat over his find. He had set it down on the ground while he worked at the nest, and so the bottle now shared the space with him. Pulling it free after the latest patrol, he carefully broke the seal and took his time pulling out the cork, slowly, slowly, to avoid that pop, usually such a satisfying sound. He set the bottle to his lips, tipped it up and allowed himself a mouthful, just a mouthful, and it warmed him to his toes. Cork back in, content and feeling smugly luxurious, he tenderly slid his temptress under a blanket of leaves and watched another pair of boots go by.

* * *

 


	9. Chapter 9

* * *

Raylan pulled up in front of Kurt's rooming house expecting another samba, or a rumba at least, the blue and red flashing lights reminiscent of a dance stage if he squinted, but Hole didn't come twerking around the corner like the last time, and Raylan was oddly disappointed. The car slowed to a roll and drifted onto the dirt shoulder while Raylan eyed the scene, local sheriff's cars in a haphazard herd of brown and star-branding gathered in the front pasture.

"Huh." The sound came out of Raylan in a short and decisive burst from a sudden and confident awareness that somehow _this_ was all a part of _that_ – 'that' being a bourbon theft – and that he was about to get lucky with his unofficial investigation. He turned off the engine, climbed out, stretched lazily, then sauntered over to see what all the fuss was about.

Raylan and Art had agreed over a glass of Buffalo Trace's namesake whiskey at work the previous evening, drinking from a bottle that Art, like Tim, had bought from the gift shop at the distillery and slipped into his desk drawer rather than face explaining it to Leslie, that maybe it was worth one more check-in on Teddy Newton and his cousin to see if either men had turned up at the rooming house overnight. Teddy appeared to have disappeared from the state. Raylan had been turning over pebbles in his search for him until he'd finally given up, falling into bed the previous night, or rather early that morning, defeated. He'd even followed up with the locals, but apparently no one cared enough about Teddy to call in a missing persons. The fact that Teddy had defied his efforts at finding him so far was incentive enough for Raylan to keep looking, a matter of pride at this point, but it was the hint of a whiff of some fine sipping bourbon that really helped the motivation along. There were still sixty-five cases of Pappy van Winkle in the wind, and finding Teddy hopefully meant finding some bourbon, too.

Raylan smiled congenially for the sheriff, nodded at the house. "Morning. What's going on here?"

"Got a call of shots fired in the wee hours," said the sheriff.

"Anyone hurt?" Raylan thought about Kurt/Courtney and figured he'd be sorry if anything had happened to him.

"No. The owner thought someone was breaking in, fired a couple rounds from his…" and here the sheriff paused and looked confused.

"Or her…" said Raylan, trying to help the story along.

"…or her…shotgun. Turns out the intruder that he…" Again a pause of uncertainty.

"Or she…"

"…or she…was shooting at was a friend of one of the fellows renting a room."

"That fellow maybe Teddy Newton?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"He's on our radar for something. These things tend to play out this way, a string of coincidences."

"Well anyway, it's a good thing the landlord isn't a better shot – though we'll be charging him, attempted murder maybe, assault at least – 'cause it turns out the intruder was a friend of Teddy's, just here to pick up some stuff. Got a key and all, and a note with permission even."

Raylan looked around while the sheriff explained, eyes settling on a woebegone figure sitting cuffed in the back of one of the cruisers, minus the pretty dress and red lipstick, then he continued his perusal of the characters in the congregation in front of the house and found another face he recognized standing talking to one of the sheriff's deputies.

"That's the friend of the tenant…the _intruder?"_

The sheriff looked where Raylan was nodding. "That's right."

"Uh-huh. And you say he had a note? How convenient when you're going through someone's apartment in the wee hours. Did he say what he was looking for?"

"Too shook up. But we did search the premises for more weapons and you'll never guess what we found in the owner's rooms?" The sheriff looked pleased with himself, chest puffed out, thumbs hooked into his belt loops, trying hard to give the appearance of casual.

"The missing Pappy." Raylan didn't even bother framing it like a question.

The sheriff collapsed in on himself like a pricked balloon, disappointed that Raylan guessed. "Two cases, yeah. How'd you know?"

"Just a hunch. Can I make a recommendation?"

"Shoot."

Raylan twitched, sighed, said, "I wish my boss would say that more often. No, actually, I was going to suggest that you let Kurt go and take the _other_ fellow in for questioning."

"What? Why?"

"It'd take too long to explain. May I?" A finger pointed at Teddy Newton's alleged friend, Raylan didn't bother waiting for the okay, walked with a purpose toward the group of deputies taking the man's statement. The smile under the cowboy hat was not meant to be friendly when he called out his greeting. "Hey Mikey, thought I recognized the biceps. Where's your boss at? I don't see the RV among all the cruisers here. Though it would be a bit like an elephant hiding in a cow pasture, I guess."

"Marshal Givens. I'm just…"

"Oh, save it, Mikey. I'm not interested in your bullshit. All I wanna know is where Wynn Duffy is and how exactly he's involved in the Pappy theft."

* * *

There was a Tool song playing in Tim's head but he resisted humming to it, though the urge was there. The teams surrounding him had made it an overnighter, trading off positions twice, flashlights and shuffling leaves, sticking to their routine patrols, and that meant that Tim was stuck in his bed of forest debris.

The morning sun was already toasting up Lexington, that and hot coffee somewhere, but in the hills the chill was still partying from the night before. The beautiful clear autumn blue that Tim had admired yesterday became a bitch of a cold night, and a shivering cold morning. He had early stages of hypothermia, not at all prepared for a night lying on the ground, but the sun was peeking up from behind the taller hill in front of him and he knew it would warm him soon enough. Of course the last thing you should do, and Tim was well aware of this fact from his training with both the military and law enforcement, was drink alcohol if you were at risk of hypothermia, but he had rationed himself to a mouthful from his bourbon buddy every few hours through the night, more to keep himself awake than for any sustenance or comfort, certainly not with any intention of getting drunk. It was strictly something to do, something to focus on. He remembered a story from somewhere about some homeless guy being found after a bitter night and surviving only thanks to the alcohol in his blood keeping it from freezing. He liked that story, reached over and had another mouthful of Old Pappy, then named the unknown alcoholic in the tale after his bourbon buddy, Pappy van Winkle.

Tim was getting hungry, beyond just skipping-your-lunch hungry – it was a twenty-four-hours-of-exercise-and-shivering-and-cold-and-nerves kind of hungry. He knew he could go a few days without food, but it wasn't something he cared to do if he didn't have to. Craig _snipers-are-cowards_ Franklin hardly seemed worth a 'have to go hungry' situation, yet here he was, trying to ignore the ache in his stomach by bitching at his pride for chasing down an asshole because of words. Sticks and stones and all that. Where was his perspective? At least it now appeared this asshole was into more than just some petty smuggling to avoid customs charges. Nobody bothered with this level of security to sneak an extra bottle of alcohol, or even a box of undeclared imports, past the customs guards. This looked more like the smuggling of illegal or stolen goods, and that was interesting. The men who had infiltrated Craig Franklin's house were, by all appearances, seriously connected in the world of misdeeds and hired guns. And they were keeping Tim from his breakfast.

A pickup pulled up while he slapped his ego for making such a fuss about three words. Something new to look at was a nice distraction from the ache in one knee and the self-abuse. Tim focused on his surroundings again, peered through the scope at the newcomer. He pulled away from the eyepiece abruptly, worried that he was starting to hallucinate now, the cold slowing blood flow to his brain, rubbed hard at his eyes then set his right against the scope again. He couldn't believe what he was seeing, but there was no denying it – that was his buddy, Tim Weaver, ex-Marine sniper, now CIA, down at the house, arms waving wildly, voice loud and carrying easily around the hills, talking to one of the armed guards.

The hunting outfit on Weaver looked ridiculous, brand new with the store creases still on the jacket and pants, a bright orange hey-don't-shoot-me vest and a thermal mug from some fancy coffee chain. It was a brilliant disguise. He had a road map in one hand, his phone in another, switching back and forth between the two as if he were hoping to blur the images into a single answer to his problems.

"Hey, I'm hoping you can help me?" He waved the map at the closest hired gun. "I can't get a signal out here. No GPS. My buddies are meeting me here, supposedly," he said, jabbing at the map with his phone, "but clearly I'm not _here,_ am I?"

Tim couldn't hear the response, but two more of the guards walked over and peered at the map.

"What road is this?"

"…"

"Well, hell. How did I miss that turn?"

"…"

"I guess I better turn around. Thanks for your help. Hey, you know, this is a nice place. You boys live here?"

"…"

"Oh, yeah? Up here hunting, too, are you? Awesome. Maybe I should join you fellows, 'cause I'm already an hour late meeting with my hunting party."

"…"

"Don't suppose this place is for sale, is it? I'd make you a good offer. It's just the kinda hunting retreat I've been looking for."

"…"

"Too bad. It's a fantastic spot, nice views, pretty hills." Weaver was checking out the area while he talked, eyes wandering the buildings and the surrounding forest. When he was finished getting directions he waved his thanks and took a step back toward the pickup he was driving, a rental, Tim guessed, shiny new model. He made a show of looking at his map again, then turned his head once up then back down the road. He shrugged, a good comic shrug at his apparent stupidity, crossed the remaining ground to his vehicle, stopped at the door to call out another thank you and looked up the hill directly at Tim's hide, pausing just long enough to grin his Weaver grin and give Tim the thumbs up.

Tim grinned back, unseen. Though the men at the house probably thought the thumbs up was for them, Tim was certain it was aimed at him. It warmed him up, that certainty, and he felt better about things, the cold and hunger fading a little now that he knew there were friendlies around. He kept an eye on his buddy, watched him start up the truck and back out carefully onto the road, window down and Brad Paisley blaring from the radio. It was so out of character that Tim almost laughed aloud. His stomach rumbled and grumbled but he ignored it, wet his lips and shifted slightly with the morning breeze blowing to disguise the noise, and followed the pickup through the rifle scope until it disappeared around a bend in the road.

Two hours later a wave from one of the men by the house signaled that they were packing up. Tim counted bodies carefully as they loaded into the vehicles and then drove away. He didn't think their leaving after Weaver's visit was a coincidence, likely felt they'd overstayed their welcome now that they had been seen. He waited another half hour before he moved, crawling backward out of his nest, bending his legs happily into a kneeling position and letting out a pent-up sigh of relief. He stretched and popped joints and jumped up and down on the spot to get the circulation going again, get the heat turned back on, then he trotted across the top of the ridge and down the way he had come in, stopping where he'd hidden his pack. There were two granola bars and an apple and a full bottle of water left over from yesterday, barely enough to satisfy him, and he greedily devoured the lot. His feast was interrupted by a noise behind him in the forest. Handgun out, he stepped carefully into the cover of a small copse of trees and waited.

Someone was whistling a Brad Paisley tune, badly. Tim threw his apple core, left-handed, in the general direction of the tuneless.

"You missed," came back.

"Be happy I wasn't really aiming." Tim stepped out from his hiding spot and holstered his gun and accepted a bear hug.

"Dude, what the fuck are you doing out here? And who were those assholes?"

"Dude, what the fuck are _you_ doing out here? And who the fuck dressed you?"

"You like it?" Weaver put out his arms and twirled. "It's a Walmart special, on sale for the hunting season."

"You'd blend right in at the gun show."

"That's what I was going for."

"Miljana send you?"

"Wow, how'd you guess?"

"She okay?"

"Worried."

"I was supposed to be home last night. Got held up. Hey, how'd you know where I was hiding? You looked right at me."

"It was an educated guess. We did the same training, dude. It's where I would've set up."

"You didn't see me?"

"Nope."

Tim nodded, satisfied with the answer.

"I got coffee in the truck."

"Seriously?"

"And bagels with ham and cheese and..."

"I love you, man."

"I know, but I understand why you feel you have to keep up the pretense with that girl."

"Seriously, what the fuck are you doing in Kentucky?"

"Vacation."

"Nice. Me, too."

"All right. Let's fucking vacation the shit out of this week then. What d'you got planned?"

Tim reached behind his pack for his treasure, presented the open bottle of Pappy.

"That'll go well with the coffee," said Weaver, reading the label.

"You pour even a drop of that into your coffee, I'll shoot you."

* * *

 


	10. Chapter 10

* * *

It was a good spot for a tailgate breakfast, parked on the edge of the Daniel Boone National Forest, leaves crispy underfoot, sun peppering the woods through the autumn remains of foliage. Tim had hoisted his pack and his rifle and followed Weaver back to where he had hidden his truck. Weaver produced some food and they sat happily, legs dangling from the truck bed, munching on a cold breakfast, sipping lukewarm coffee and catching up.

After he'd eaten two bagels in record time, Tim reached for the bourbon, uncorked the open bottle and offered it to Weaver with a grin. "You know what this is, right?"

"Whiskey?"

"Not just whiskey. This is twenty-year-old Pappy van Winkle, fresh from the stolen batch bottled this past month. People kill for a taste of it, pay like seventy-five dollars for a glass of it at a bar. They have lotteries at the local liquor store just for the opportunity to buy a bottle when it's released. It's more precious than gold."

Weaver took a drink, swished the liquid in his mouth, tilted his head back and forth, looked up, looked down, shrugged and said, "I don't get what all the fuss is about. It's okay, I guess."

" _It's okay, I guess?"_ Tim snatched the bottle from Weaver's hand. "Give that back, I'm not wasting it on you. Go get your cheap tequila shit and drink that." He corked the whiskey, cradled it in the crook of his arm. "Should it bother me, the fact that I say _'stolen_ bourbon' and you don't even blink?"

Weaver blinked.

"I'm just saying," said Tim. "It's not a criticism, but it doesn't bother you at all, does it?"

"That rifle I gave you was stolen, remember? Didn't seem to bother you."

Tim eyed the rifle lying beside him. "You never said anything about it being stolen."

"Didn't I? Oh, well, don't worry – the owner's in no condition to report it missing."

Tim thought about that just long enough to decide he didn't want to think about it, moved on. "Nice truck. Yours?"

"Nope. Stole it."

Tim closed his eyes, uncorked the bourbon again and had a second gulp. In that instant, he understood Art in a way that had previously eluded him. In that instant, he walked in Art's shoes. In that instant, he wore the expression that was Art's daily uniform at the office dealing with the likes of Raylan, and himself, and even occasionally Rachel. He didn't like it much, soured up his face even more.

Weaver elbowed him hard. "Just kidding. Dude, I wish you could see yourself right now, that look." He pointed a finger a little too close and Tim grabbed it and twisted until Weaver dropped off the back of his truck still laughing, but relenting. "All right, shit, calm down. I rented it. This isn't Iraq."

"You fucker. What does it say about you that I believed you when you said it was stolen? Fuck, I miss your beard, less of your face to have to deal with. How did you rent a truck? Don't you have to be an actual person to do that, have ID and all?"

"I got ID." Weaver dug into his pocket and pulled out a wallet, a driver's license, a credit card, handed them to Tim for inspection.

"Hadadezer Flint? You pick the name?"

"I figured it would blend in well in Kentucky."

"Not so much in Lexington but you'd fit right in in Harlan. So do I call you Hadadezer, or just Had?"

"Call me Stella."

"What's wrong with Had?"

"You'll confuse your girl."

Tim took another drink, picturing Miljana and Weaver together without him there to run interference. He chewed his lip wondering how best to make it up to her.

"Look at you," said Weaver, and shook his head.

"What? She's worth it."

"Not her – her, I get. _You._ Go look in the mirror, dude. You got it bad."

"I got what bad?"

"Recce wannabe."

The comment was dismissed with a head tilt and a huff. _"Recce wannabe._ I need a shave, is all."

"So does the entire recce platoon."

"So does half the country. Maybe I'm going for hipster."

"You're wearing socks."

Tim looked down at his boots tied tightly, as if he needed to confirm that he was indeed wearing socks. "What's your point?"

"My point is you're not so much hipster as operator. You love this shit. Don't deny it. You need to come work with me."

"Are we gonna start this again? You are such a nag. If I'm gonna do anything stupid, it's gonna be hopping a plane to Syria and fighting ISIS or IS, or whatever the fuck you wanna call them, with the Yezidi."

"The Yezidi?'"

"That's right."

"She'd let you?"

"I don't think she'd be happy about it, but she wouldn't try to stop me. She's not like that."

Weaver shook his head. "CIA, dude. We're everywhere. Never boring. Imagine the fun."

"I _can_ imagine, and there's my problem. You all are too embroiled in Washington politics, and spread out all over the place, different country every six months, left with your ass hanging out if you're caught. At least in the military you've got a platoon of buddies who won't leave you behind, not to mention something close to plausible deniability, a nice buffer of generals between you and DC, and an actual declaration of war to point at. Besides, I like to focus on one fight at a time, keep it simple. You guys are like the fucking ADHD of government organizations. Speaking of a declaration of war" – Tim dropped off the tailgate – "come see what I found."

Weaver stayed put, watching bemused as Tim slipped his bottle of whiskey gently back into the case and the case carefully behind the seat in Weaver's truck. Then, tucking his bag beside a tree and kicking some leaves over it, Tim shouldered his rifle and headed back in the direction of the house.

"You are so fucking single-minded," said Weaver loudly to Tim's back disappearing through the trees. "It's fucking weird."

"Hey, ADHD." Tim pulled his keys from his pocket, jangled them up in the air, said, "Shiny thing, shiny thing," without turning around.

With a dramatic shoulder slump that only the trees took note of, Weaver pushed off the tailgate and closed it, locked the truck, kicked a few more leaves around the abandoned pack, then followed behind Tim, complaining as he trudged. "What's so fucking important about this house that you'll worry your girl and not come vacationing with me?"

Tim's voice carried back through the forest. "He said, 'Snipers are cowards,' said it to my face in a crowded room."

"Seriously?" Weaver jogged to catch up. "So just shoot him."

"He doesn't carry."

"Well then, why didn't you just punch him in the face? Would've been quicker and more to the point than all this, whatever _this_ is."

"Bruises don't last; a criminal record, though, that'll sting a while, give him some time to think about his words."

"Dude, that's overkill."

Tim returned a sub-zero smile.

* * *

Raylan made no attempt to disguise the fact that he was following Wynn Duffy's man after the locals disregarded his advice and let Mikey go on his way. He waved and smiled at Mikey's angry eyes reflected in the rearview mirror while they both waited at a red light, signaled every turn that Mikey made, kept no more than a car-length back, pulled in right next to him in the parking lot where the RV was waiting. There was a synchronized turning off of engines and opening of drivers' side doors and stepping out onto the asphalt, then Raylan finished the pairs routine with a hand gesture – 'take me to your leader'. It was as if the whole routine were choreographed and Raylan was working through it from memory, anticipating the next move, anticipating yet another conversation with Duffy, anticipating everything but the three men stepping out from behind the RV as they approached the door, each with an assault rifle up and aimed, and not one of them smiling.

Raylan stopped abruptly. "Well, shit. Mikey, you didn't tell me your boss had company."

"You didn't ask."

The door opened and Raylan was greeted by the muzzle of another rifle, and an equally business-like thug stepped out and relieved Raylan of his sidearm and backup and then prodded him inside. It was a full house – three more armed men, and a suit and tie on the couch exuding confidence and ease and a suppressed threat.

Duffy stood before the threat looking like a nervous courtier. He turned his head, a stiff smile for his favorite marshal. "Raylan, what a surprise."

"Not unwelcome, I hope." Raylan spoke to Duffy but kept his eyes on the threat.

"A party can never suffer from the addition of one more guest."

"And what exactly are we celebrating today?"

"Fucked if I know."

Raylan turned in a circle, taking a good look at the crowd, gave them a facetious oriental bow. "So boys, whose birthday is it?"

No one answered.

"Duffy?"

A shrug.

"Well then, a tough crowd. Okay, it was never my best thing, being the life of the party, but I'll give it a shot. Shall we break out the Old Pappy and I'll make a toast?"

"I prefer a martini, Raylan. I don't keep much bourbon. You might find some Jack Daniels in the liquor cabinet."

"I heard that there was some van Winkle tasting going on here."

"No."

"No?"

"I think I might have noticed something like that, Raylan. It's a luxurious coach home, but still, it's not that big."

"You don't have any stolen bourbon?"

Duffy lifted an eyebrow, shook his head, no. "What are you talking about?"

Raylan was beginning to suspect that he'd arrived at the wrong RV. "The stolen bourbon – the sixty-five cases of Pappy van Winkle. Isn't that what Mikey was looking for at Teddy Newton's place?"

"No."

"He wasn't?"

Duffy looked heavenward and sighed and shook his head. It was evident that the head shake was exasperation, not a repetition of the 'no.'

Having a trail as wide as the one he was following end so abruptly left Raylan completely confounded. He wasn't prepared. He lurched forward as if coming to a sudden, unexpected stop. He was staring at a dead end, and he wasn't used to that. "Then what's going on here?"

"I had the misplaced hope that you're unexpected presence here might indicate that you knew what was going on. Apparently not. How's your Japanese?"

They both turned to the gentleman seated silently on the couch. Raylan showed off his star; the gentleman looked unimpressed.

"Does he speak at all?"

"Yes," said the gentleman.

"Okay then, well, who are you and what are you doing here? I'm gonna want to see some ID – passports will do – and permits for all of these weapons."

"Ore wa Yamaguchi-gumi to tsutometete..." He bowed his head slightly and pointed to himself, then added, "Ore no sakazuki ga hoshii yo."

Screwing up his face didn't help his comprehension, so Raylan turned back to Duffy for clarification. "Does he not speak English?"

"Not a great deal. He does, however, make himself understood. I've discovered a gun to the head is better than Fodor's for easy Japanese translation."

"Probably true for any language."

"Likely. For the record, I'd be happy not to test that theory."

Raylan nodded agreement. "So what happens now?"

"I hate to repeat myself, but...fucked if I know."

* * *

"Okay, so it's a nice woodworking shop." The Tims stood admiring Craig Franklin's garage, the pristine saws and lathes and drill presses, the large worktable in the center with frames and vises, chests of tools, even a working sink and a stocked refrigerator. Weaver helped himself to a beer. "Let me rephrase that. It's a _really_ nice shop."

"It's a blind." Tim pointed at the closest chop saw. "Still got the cheap-shit factory blade on it. _As if._ Give me a hand."

Pitching in when he figured out what Tim was doing, Weaver set his beer on the nearest tool chest, and the two men pushed the center table to the side, revealing a trap door. "How the fuck did you find this? That table looks cemented in place."

"No sawdust anywhere. You ever been in a workshop without any dirt, nothing?"

"Nope."

"Me neither. Not possible."

Tim pulled up the trap door and disappeared down a set of stairs, Weaver following. The stairs led into a large finished room stacked with boxes, the closest pile bearing the label Buffalo Trace Distillery.

"Seventy-five dollars a glass, huh?"

"Yep, and more in some places."

"Insane."

They spent a few minutes trying to figure out what else was hidden in the smuggler's hole, peering into boxes and holding up items for each other to inspect, mirrored shrugs.

"Your friends coming back anytime soon?"

"I don't know. They didn't leave me an itinerary." Tim dug a tiny porcelain bowl out of a crate of packing material. "What could you possibly serve in this?"

"Looks ornamental."

"Looks small." He replaced the bowl and the crate lid and started up the stairs again. "We'd better get going. Don't wanna get caught down here."

They put everything back as they'd found it and locked up, then Tim dragged Weaver over to the main house, pointed at the alarm panel visible just inside the door.

"Can you bypass the security system?"

"Sure."

"Great."

Stepping back from the door, Tim waved Stella over.

"Now?"

"No, how 'bout next year when I don't fucking give a shit anymore?"

"I don't have my gear here."

"Why the fuck not?"

"I'm on fucking vacation, dude."

"So am I, and I got all my fucking gear with me."

"We've already established that you're weird, all right?"

"Fuck." Tim dropped his forehead on the window pane, growled at the blinking lights on the panel inside.

"So what do you want to do? How 'bout a beer and some lunch?"

"I wanna get into the house and have a look around and see why Mr. Yakuza and his Crazy 88 are hanging out in backwoods Kentucky."

"You sure they're Japanese?"

"Well, they look Japanese, and they were speaking Japanese."

"You know Japanese?"

"No."

"Well, how do you know?"

"It didn't sound like Chinese."

"What's the difference?"

"Japanese sounds like everyone's apologizing and angry about it. Chinese is…different."

"See, you belong in the CIA. You're such a natural at languages."

Tim didn't want to start that conversation again, brushed impatiently passed his buddy, knocking him into the wall of the house. "They were Japanese."

"Okay, I believe you."

Weaver watched Tim stomping back up the hill in the direction of his sniper's nest, sighed loudly enough that Tim heard him and stopped and turned around.

"Are you coming, or are you hoping they're gonna show up back here with some sushi?"

"Sushi and sake sounds good," said Weaver, once again jogging to catch up with his buddy. "I know a good sushi place in Lexington."

"Enjoy yourself. I'm gonna stay. Let Milja know I'm fine?"

"No. She'll just yell at me. Why don't I stay and guard the bourbon and you go deal with her?"

"I can't. I need to find something to call in."

"You've got a small mountain of stolen bourbon."

"That I found in an _illegal_ search. I need to give a judge a reason to okay a _legal_ search, not something you'd all be familiar with at the CIA. Hey, could you talk to my boss, see what he thinks?"

"He? I thought Miljana was your boss."

"My other boss."

"Does he know you're doing this?"

"No."

"So I gotta do all the dangerous work while you sit here on vacation and play recce?"

"When did you start being such a pussy?"

"I hate you."

* * *

 


	11. Chapter 11

* * *

Miljana considered turning around and walking back out the door. The expression on Art's face at seeing her wasn't exactly inviting. He stood up abruptly, pushing his chair backward into the bureau behind him, and held out a hand, stop, and she stopped, and he stomped out into the bullpen to meet her.

"No," he said firmly, denying all evidence in a bid to rescue his day. "No, no, no."

"Art, I…"

"Goddammit." He cursed loudly, glared around the room to discourage rubber-necking. Nelson was too slow at finding something else to focus on, caught Art's eye and his frustrated bark. "Do you need me to find you something to do?"

"Uh, no, Chief. I'm… Do you want me to look after this?"

"God, no." Art turned so Nelson was no longer in his sight lines, scowled now solely for Miljana. "What's he done?"

"He…" She hesitated.

"He...? He's supposed to be on vacation. He's supposed to be drinking his morning coffee…leisurely. He's supposed to be putting a fine shine on his personal weapons collection. He's supposed to be _with you._ Now, Tim's been gone a whole day and half, but I don't think that's long enough for me to forget what he looks like." Art jabbed a finger at Miljana's companion, Tim Weaver. "I'm pretty sure that's not Tim."

Weaver held up a finger. "Actually…"

Miljana smacked Tim hard on the arm, cutting off the sentence he'd started. She aimed a look at him that was locked and loaded and when she was sure his mouth was well and truly shut, she traded threatening for pleading, bit her lip, wrapped her arms tightly around herself for a full portrait of vulnerability to appeal to Art's fatherly tendencies, turned back to the bureau chief and said, "Please, Art. I wouldn't be here if I didn't think it was necessary."

The silent exchange between Miljana and Tim Weaver wasn't lost on Art. He didn't miss much, couldn't miss something that blatant. " _Shit."_ He ground his teeth on the expectation of trouble and the knowledge that it was going to be his to deal with.

Miljana tried to conjure tears.

And that did it. Art dropped his head, sighed, put a solicitous arm around her back and steered her through the door to his office. He was way too soft on women, especially young women around his daughters' age, and especially any woman willing to take on one of his deputies and the life that went with it. They, including his own wife, Leslie, held a special place in his hierarchy of whom to respect and whom to ignore, a place near the top, just over the Director of the Marshals Service and just under God. Well, maybe just over God, too. "All right, let's hear it, but in here so when I start swearing I won't disturb the proceedings in the courtroom downstairs."

Frantically thumbing through the photos on her phone as she allowed herself to be propelled through Art's office door, Miljana stopped at a picture she had taken of a bottle of bourbon, the one Craig Franklin had on his desk the previous afternoon in his office in Lexington. It was a risk playing her best card first, but she wasn't certain how long she could hold Tim Weaver to his already broken promise of silence, and once he started talking she was certain Art would stop listening. She refused a seat, hoping to give the idea of urgency, and held out her phone for the chief deputy. He took it from her and studied the photo, then reached behind him and picked up his reading glasses and peered more closely at the display screen.

"Is that…?"

"Yes."

"And it's the…?"

"Yes."

Art gaped, staring at the photo. "Where'd you take this?"

"At Craig Franklin's office. He offered me a glass of it just yesterday."

"Who's Craig Franklin?"

"He runs a charity organization that I used to do volunteer work for. Tim thinks he's smuggling illegal goods." She continued quickly, setting the file that Tim had compiled on his personal most wanted on Art's desk and rifling through the papers, pulling them out one at a time and holding them up for Art. "He's been cited a few times for customs infractions but never charged, and he owns, at arms' length, an import-export business, and Tim just got something from a Frankfort court clerk about a case involving that company that was, well, he thinks the charges were dropped and that there was bribery in the mix. And there's a residence he owns that's…"

"Whoa. Slow down. Did you say 'charity organization'?"

Miljana nodded.

"If this is about that 'snipers are cowards' comment then I'm not going to…"

"Art…" Miljana put out a hand, palm up, and Weaver set his phone into it, and she passed it over to Art, the display showing another photo, this one of the mountain of bourbon in the smuggler's hole.

"Holy shit." Art stared, then set Miljana's phone in the same hand with Weaver's, freeing his right to rub furiously at his head. He was torn between wanting to thwart Tim's ridiculous vendetta and wanting to be the hero of the Kentucky law enforcement community, the man who recovered the stolen Pappy van Winkle. But it wasn't a difficult or lengthy struggle for Art – he knew he was in now, no matter what motivated Tim, no matter what else Miljana or her tag-along had to say. She couldn't have used better bait to hook an Eastern District of Kentucky US Marshal. "Tim took this?"

She nodded quickly, glossing over Art's assumption about which Tim, not sure how he would react if she corrected him and confessed that Weaver had been at the property, too.

Tim Weaver had been annoyingly calm when he strolled into her office after lunch, understandably mistaken for a client by the young man working reception. Weaver's demeanor was immediately reassuring, a relaxed smile – that is until he started talking, laying out the situation, why _her_ Tim hadn't arrived home yet. In almost a bored voice, Weaver had explained Tim's absence, slipping in details like assault rifles and patrols and Japanese organized crime like he was discussing the agenda at an insurance convention. "Don't worry," he had said. So she didn't, she panicked, canceled her afternoon, and dragged an amused Weaver to the Federal Court House to see the Bureau Chief at the Lexington Marshals Office. The situation scared her. She was eager to hand it all over to someone who knew what to do with it, someone who might muster the troops and bring her Tim home safely for the rest of his week off. Being bourbon and baconed to death was sounding good to her at this moment, better than hospital food while visiting her sniper in ICU. "Yes, uh, Tim…took that…yesterday."

"Where?"

"At Craig Franklin's country house."

Art peered over his reading glasses at her. "And did Craig Franklin invite Tim into his country house and willingly show him his collection of stolen bourbon?"

"Uh…"

"No." He answered his own question, huffed loudly and swore. "Shit. What does he think he's doing?"

Tim Weaver spoke up then, offering an explanation, happy to be helpful. "He's staying to keep an eye on them. Don't worry, dude – he broke in when the place was empty. Nobody saw him, not even the Yakuza security. Tim's good at picking locks, got a real talent for it."

"Dammit, Stella!" Miljana snapped another backhand at Weaver who dodged it, brought up his fists in a boxer's stance and started dancing like Mohammed Ali, dodging and weaving around Art's desk.

"Is that all you got, girl? Come on. I can take you. Watch me. I'm a butterfly."

"If Tim took this in an illegal search," said Art, watching Miljana try to get a slap past Weaver's defenses, "then I can't use this. It'll never be allowed as evidence, either in court or for a search warrant."

The news stopped the boxing match.

Art had a phone back in each hand at this point, looking from one to the other. He did a juggling motion without actually throwing them. "I could, however, use the picture _you_ took of the single bottle at Franklin's office to get a search warrant for all of his properties, and we could, through some contrived luck, happen to search his country house first, but…" He aimed the next part at Miljana. "You might have to testify about how and where you got your photo."

She nodded. "Okay."

"Dammit, don't be so agreeable. This is Tim out for some payback. He shouldn't be dragging you into it."

"Actually, he'd probably say I dragged _him_ into it. He didn't even want to go to that dinner party. And really, I should have listened to him. Hindsight, you know?"

"That's hardly the point, young lady. Do you think this is worth it – you getting caught up with judges and attorneys and…and…other unsavory elements just to mollify Tim's overblown sense of injustice about…?" He stopped, processing, looked at Weaver. "Did you say _Yakuza?"_

"Yep, Yakuza – Japanese, assault rifles and tattoos up the wazoo. It's not like they were wearing nametags or anything, but Tim said they were Yakuza and I believe him. They fit the profile. Though maybe they're just really hardcore collectors. We did see lots of other collector kinda shit squirreled away in that little hidey-hole the guy's got…in his garage." Weaver's voice trailed off, his enthusiasm dampened by the expression on Art's face; he cleared his throat. "Nice office you got. I like the glass walls. Screams 'accountability' to me, transparency. That's a good thing, very twenty-first century."

"Who are you exactly?"

Miljana's answer came like a bullet, shot across Weaver's bow as a warning. "He's a friend of Tim's."

"Ranger?"

Weaver shook his head. "I was in the Marine Corp."

"Close enough. You two know each other from…?"

"Sniper school. We hit it off."

"I'll bet. And he took you breaking and entering with him, good friend that he is?"

"Yeah, it was fun. A bit like work, you know, but when it's not _your_ work, it never seems as boring."

Art blinked, once. "You're talking to a federal law enforcement officer. You know that, right?"

"Yeah, I checked you out when Tim transferred here."

Art didn't often find himself at a loss for words, but there were none to be found to follow up that statement.

Miljana had a few tucked away, filled in the blanks, reluctantly. "He's CIA." Then she made the dreaded introductions.

"CIA? Terrific. He's CIA." Art seemed to take the news in stride.

Miljana smiled absently, nodding again, thinking she must look like a bubble-headed bobble-head. "Like I said before, he's a friend of Tim's, the other Tim…your Tim…well, my Tim, I guess, really." She closed her eyes. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I'm getting the picture. CIA, huh? And what exactly does the CIA have to do with this?"

"Absolutely nothing. I'm on vacation."

"You and Tim are vacationing together? Jesus. I can tell just five minutes in a room with you that that's a recipe for disaster."

"That's what I said," said Miljana.

Art ignored her. "And this is your idea of vacationing? Breaking into people's houses? That may be the CIA version of a holiday, but it's not legal in the US and Tim should know that. I'm pretty sure they cover B and E at Marshals school."

"Hey, dude, relax. No one knows but us."

"But I don't know _you."_

"No need to worry. I can keep a secret." A brimstone grin spread under the new beard sprouting. "I think God is the only one above me for knowing shit that a person just shouldn't know. Even POTUS doesn't have my security clearance." He zipped his lips with a finger.

"Did Tim call you in to help?"

"No. She did," said Weaver, a thumb in Miljana's direction. "I didn't know Tim was on vacation – that was just a lucky coincidence. I tried Disney last year." Weaver's face scrunched into distaste. "But there's too many people in costume there. I hate not being able to see their faces – gets me edgy."

There was an awkward silence; Miljana tried to keep up a poker face.

"It must be something in the name," said Art eventually, with a meaningful look at Miljana. "You said he's a Tim, too?"

Weaver answered, "No, Tim's the Timtoo. You can call me Stella, or Hadadezer. That's my name on my driver's license this week." He pulled it out and held it up, looking very pleased with himself.

Art took it, studied it, scowled at it. "Hadadezer? That's the stupidest…"

"Art, please." Miljana was running out of patience for the meet and greet. "Please – warrant, assault rifles, Tim?"

Art repeated her list. "Warrant, assault rifles, Tim. Do you hear yourself? You really want to get involved in this?"

"What else can I do?"

"Well, I've got Raylan chasing this thing from the other end. With any luck he'll find something. He was going to see Wynn Duffy before lunch, said he'd call." Art checked his watch. "That was almost five hours ago." Time hung itself on the dwindling possibilities. "You might have to take the stand at a full-blown trial. Do you have any idea what that's like?"

"I don't care at this point." Miljana's frustration let loose, as close as she would ever come to yelling. "Look, I don't know anything about criminal investigations or trials, but ask me if I think you're all crazy bourbon-abusing alcoholics and I'll give you an expert opinion on that."

"I don't think I want to hear your expert opinion on that."

"I don't think you do, either."

Art narrowed his eyes at Miljana and she opened hers wide, beseeching. He handed back Weaver's phone, but kept a tight hold on hers, dialed Raylan from his own, hoping for an easier route to bringing the Old Pappy home safely. It went to voice mail, and he left a short and gruff message then huffed out a breath. "I know a bourbon-abusing alcoholic judge that will happily sign off on this. Follow me." He led the way out into the bullpen, barking orders. "Nelson, keep calling Raylan until he answers, then find out where the hell he is. Rachel, get a team together, well-armed. Tim Hadadezer here will tell you where we're going and what we might be up against, and how many locals to call in on it. I'm going downstairs to talk to Reardon to get a search warrant. Be ready when I get back. And you, young lady," Art pointed at Miljana, "you get to meet The Hammer."

* * *

 


	12. Chapter 12

* * *

They were packed tightly into the back of one of the white SUVs: Raylan, hands zip-tied behind his back, Yakuza member six-of-eight, and Wynn Duffy. Members seven and eight were in the front, faces stern. They were following another white SUV, in it Yakuza members one through five. Raylan's expression was pissy; Duffy's resigned; the Yakuza member's between them a clichéd zen, or perhaps he was just blissfully unaware, unable to understand the discussion between the two Americans, the southern midland dialect messing with any hope he might have of eavesdropping.

"You don't believe me," said Wynn Duffy.

"I never have before, so why would I start now?"

"Suit yourself."

"Teddy Newton." The name was spoken slowly, the two words distinct from one another, a question and a statement of fact, blended with just the right amount of impatience and demanding, all in true Raylan style.

"A fuzzy cookie with figs inside?"

"Why would you bullshit me here, now? It may not have occurred to you before, but let me break some news to you – the way the world works, it's not all bad guys on one side of the field and good guys on the other."

"You're living proof of that."

"My point is, I think this bunch would be just as happy killing you as me. You are not a member of their team."

"Raylan, I am well aware of that fact. And you can believe me when I say that."

"Well then, if you want my help getting out of this, you'd best start talking."

"Or what?" Wynn Duffy leaned forward and peered around the stony-faced and armed man sitting snuggly fitted between them. "Or what, Raylan? Are you going to arrest me? Please, do. I think I might actually appreciate a show of force by the Marshals Service today. Or perhaps you're going to hit me...with your hands tied. Maybe if you bump Yoshi here, he'll pass it on." Duffy's eyebrows added some adjectives to the sentence, disdain and disbelief, transmitting clearly the sure knowledge that any threat Raylan might utter was an idle one.

"Where's the bourbon, Duffy? Where's Teddy Newton? Where the hell are they taking us?"

"I don't know, I don't know, and…let me think a minute…I don't know."

"You must know something – Wynn Duffy, the man of opportunity in the land of opportunity. You have your finger in every pie, I'll bet even the bourbon pie."

"Marshal, you might want to consider cutting down on the drinking. Every second sentence that shoots unedited out of your mouth contains the word 'bourbon.' I don't think that's very healthy."

Raylan huffed loudly and sat back with as frustrated a slump as he could manage with his hands tucked and tied behind him. The frustration grew when the Yakuza gunman beside him let slip a bare smirk. The driver moved his head a fraction at that moment, watching something in his rearview mirror. The movement caught Raylan's attention and distracted him. He turned his head and wriggled sideways and looked out the back window. Two more white SUVs had joined the convoy. Raylan wondered which Lexington car rental company could come up with four identical white Suburbans, decided probably none, which meant these vehicles were likely purchased. That fact meant nothing by itself, but when you linked it to the rest of the goings-on, it suggested power and money. He was so focused on where that information might lead that he missed the first few words of the only information Duffy had yet to offer.

"…out of bed. So all I know is this – they took me for a pleasant drive into the country this morning, to a house at which my company installed an alarm system last year. Of course, I have the code. We went inside, they looked around, we left. I don't know, Marshal. Maybe they think I'm a real estate agent?"

"Whose house?"

"Craig Franklin."

"Craig Franklin." Raylan repeated the name, thought it sounded familiar, distantly, like it had come up in conversation somewhere recently, but which conversation? He twisted his brain into a knot trying to remember the context.

* * *

Rachel intercepted Art when he came back through the doors into the bullpen from the elevators, a piece of paper clutched tightly in his hand. She put out an arm, stopping her boss and separating him from an unaware Miljana who walked past, through the roadblock into the room.

"Chief."

"Rachel, you got a team together?"

"Yes, but…"

"But…?"

"Are you sure about the information?" She tilted her head in the direction of Tim Weaver, and spoke in a low voice. "Who's the freak?"

"He's CIA."

"God help us."

"I don't think he's paying attention today. Hadadezer, the freak, will have to do."

"Why's the CIA involved in this, on domestic soil? FBI maybe…"

"He's not here in any official capacity. He's a friend of Tim's."

Rachel drew her head back, shook it lightly. "Why am I not surprised?" She looked surprised by her statement, sounded surprised, too.

"Now that you mention it, I'm not either. I'm wondering how they missed it in the personal history screening when Tim applied to the Marshals Service."

Miljana, cut loose from her tether to Art, drifted to the middle of the room, still in awe of the personality she had just met. Judge Reardon was a legend to her, someone Tim told tall tales about while they ate dinner together. But now that she had had first-hand experience with the man, she thought maybe she might be less disbelieving of Tim's stories. The more she was drawn into his world, the more she considered law enforcement a missed opportunity. Not that she would want to wear a badge and carry a gun, it was more the idea of studying the psychology of the career choice, from the ground up, prison guards to judges to military. There was an academic publication in there somewhere, she was sure of it. She ran some thesis topics through her head, imagined pitching it to the faculty at UK, then changed her mind. Maybe it was best left alone. It might stir up some conflict in her partnership with Tim. She cocked her head to the side, considering, absent-mindedly copying Tim's body-language, and continued to drift toward Art's office. A phone ringing interrupted her thoughts and she snapped her head back straight and stopped walking and turned to say something to Art. Realizing she was alone, she drifted back to her assigned mooring.

"Now what?" she said, anchoring herself between Rachel and Art.

"Now, young lady, you go home, and take your CIA buddy with you."

"But…"

"But…?"

She read in his expression that there would be no satisfaction to come from her protests, so she relented, looked around the office for Tim Weaver.

"Where is he?"

"Who?"

"Stella." Rachel and Art looked at her blankly, so she qualified. "My CIA buddy."

All three did a circle, searching.

"Rachel?"

"I left him in the conference room," she said, pointing with a pen. "I swear he was there when you walked in."

"Shit." Miljana flapped her penguin arms. "He's got my car keys. That bastard."

* * *

Raylan didn't much like _not_ being the center of attention. Even unwanted attention was preferable to being sidelined. After a long, uncomfortable, unexpected and unfruitful car ride, he appreciated being able to stretch his legs, but he didn't appreciate the seven extra gunmen in the two vehicles that joined up with them just outside of Lexington, and he didn't appreciate that the mysterious Craig Franklin, yanked from one of the other SUVs and identified by Duffy, wasn't anyone that he recognized. It irked him, annoyingly, especially when he and Duffy were corralled against one of the SUVs at gunpoint, while the remainder of the parade moved inside the beautiful log cabin that was their destination.

"Nice house," he thought, and said aloud, looking around the property for some clue to what the hell was going on. "Nice garage. Nice place."

Duffy was the only one who responded, a noncommittal humph.

"So you did the security system?"

Another humph.

"Craig Franklin, wasn't it you said? Why do I know that name?"

"He does a lot of charity work in Lexington. I'm trying to imagine how that might connect the two of you. I'm having trouble."

"Craig Franklin…Franklin." Raylan shook his head, wishing he could be part of the group that headed into the house with Craig Franklin. "And they were looking for something when they brought you here earlier?"

"It seemed that way, Raylan, yes."

"What do you think this place is worth?"

"Why?"

"It happens often enough that when I run across money, I run across trouble."

"A bit of a stereotype. My mother's cousin is quite wealthy, and entirely legitimate."

"I said 'often', not always."

"I'd say it's probably less than half the time. That's not often."

"In my experience it's more than half the time."

"I think your sample group is slightly biased by your particular career choice. Look at Hollywood, lots of money, and I suspect most of it made legitimately, if not exactly earned honestly."

"You got something against actors?"

"Only the overpaid ones. Mikey's cousin is a Broadway actor. I wouldn't call her overpaid. We went to see her in a show a few years ago. It was quite good."

"Why are we discussing Mikey's cousin?"

"I'm making a point."

"I'd like to make the point that we're in a bit of trouble here. Maybe you'd like to help come up with a way out of it as opposed to making idle conversation?"

Duffy looked around the yard, looked at Raylan, whispered, "There are nine armed, fit young men within shooting distance of us. What would you like me to do, Marshal, distract them? I'd have better luck distracting you with stories about Mikey's other cousins."

"How many cousins does he have?"

"Plenty."

Distraction presented itself then, but not in any helpful way. An abused and rusting Corolla pulled into the driveway and a shotgun, dress and red lipstick stepped out, aggressively, and started shouting. "I want to speak to Craig Franklin. Where's Craig Franklin?"

It was the dress that saved Kurt from a bullet from one of the Yakuza, the dress coupled with the baritone voice, unusual enough for a hesitation. There was a confused pause, and Raylan jumped into it.

"Kurt, put the gun down. You will die if you don't."

Raylan recognized the expression on Kurt's face, reminiscent of the look on the face of the lovely Rebecca White from high school when Raylan had led her into the woods for some playtime and they'd stood to gather their clothes after, and realized, belatedly, that they'd been rolling in a patch of poison ivy.

Kurt suddenly became aware of the patch of poison ivy he was standing in. "Shit," he said, with a fair amount of feeling, then he gingerly set down his shotgun, and clasped his hands together at the front of his dress.

* * *

Up the hill was a sniper, camouflaged in the leaves, muzzle break at the end of the barrel lined up like a vector on the Yakuza members guarding Raylan – and Wynn Duffy, though Tim wasn't sure he'd risk his life for that pair of eyebrows. He wondered what his buddy, Tim Weaver, was up to and if he'd had any luck with Miljana and Art. Raylan's arrival was a bit too quick to have been the product of any effort of Weaver's to get the Marshals Service involved, and that was worrisome. It meant that Raylan, as usual, was acting alone.

When the Corolla pulled up and Kurt stomped out, Tim cursed himself for not bringing the open bottle of Pappy back to his hide with him. He felt he could use a drink about now, empathized once again with Art. That was twice in twenty-four hours and Tim wasn't sure he appreciated it. It made him feel old.

He counted bad guys, counted good or goodish guys, decided on his targets in order, decided that even on a case of Rip It he couldn't take down the bad guys fast enough to successfully cover all the good guys. The bad guys were too spread out, too numerous, too well armed, still running patrols on his ridge, one on Raylan, one on Duffy, two more now frisking Kurt. There was a nervousness about them since Kurt had arrived. They seemed a bit more jumpy.

Shit.

If only Raylan's hands weren't tied – he would be an asset to rely on then. Strategically, Tim knew he should protect Raylan first, then Kurt, Duffy if there were time left. He was just settling in his head how things would play out when the door to the cabin opened and Craig Franklin stumbled out, propelled by the shove of a tattooed arm, motivated by a rifle barrel. He turned and started begging. He was speaking in Japanese, so Tim could only assume that it was begging by the tone. The Yakuza suit followed, walking calmly and poised, unmoved by the pleas. He stopped to light a cigarette, eyes hidden behind sunglasses.

Tim recounted, friend then foe, then wished hard for his buddy, Weaver, to show up again. He made a deal with God, or the Devil, or whoever might be listening and capable of some supernatural interference – he'd give up bourbon if someone would send him some help, or just some dumb luck.

* * *

 


	13. Chapter 13

* * *

"You are supposed to be in jail." Raylan was angry, glared at Kurt as the Yakuza herded him to their end of the yard. It would be one thing if he got shot today, always an expectation, and he might do a happy dance if Wynn Duffy got shot, but it would quite another thing, and there was nothing he could think of that would make it all right, if Kurt got shot.

Kurt obviously felt the same, and he looked decidedly dejected when he replied, lacking his usual luster. "They let me go."

"Why would they do that?" Raylan's anger shifted now to the clearly incompetent local law enforcement in Kurt's town. "The sheriff seemed determined to press charges."

"Teddy got me out."

"What? You found Teddy?"

"Sorta. He was sleeping off a bender at the jail when they took me in. He said he and his cousin had got a line on a couple of barrels of Wild Turkey and they'd drunk their way through quite a bit of it over the week. They set fire to the barn they were in, said it was an accident. The sheriff caught up with them doubling back into town on Mrs. Howe's old bicycle. He was sober by the time I got there, told the sheriff that he never gave nobody permission to go into his rooms. They had to let me go then."

"Shit."

"Well, I didn't do anything wrong."

"That don't make me feel any better at this juncture. I wish they'd kept you overnight at least, for your own good, then all of this would've been over and done." Raylan pressed his lips together tightly, his eyes, too. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Trying to get the rent owed me. I thought maybe I could garter Teddy's wages. He said he and his cousin have been working this bourbon theft thing with the fellow that lives here, Craig Franklin."

"Bourbon theft?"

Kurt shrugged. "This is where they delivered it."

Duffy leaned into the conversation. "Are we back on the bourbon again, Marshal? And I think you mean 'garnish.' It's garnish wages, not garter. Nice dress, by the way."

Raylan turned his back on Duffy. "I think," he said to Kurt, with a bit of force behind the words for the stupidity, "it might be difficult to formally garnish wages that aren't declared. They were stealing. Did you think they'd get a paycheck for that?"

"I just wanted to talk to the man. See if he might be reasonable to the idea. It was worth a try."

"You expect anyone to be reasonable while you're waving a shotgun around?"

"They usual are. You were."

They all turned at a noise from the house. The front door opened and Craig Franklin stumbled into view, followed by a rifle barrel and the remaining Yakuza gang. It didn't look to Raylan like things were going Franklin's way. He was prodded to the middle of the yard, close to their tight group, knocked to his knees. Raylan felt he had a pretty good idea of what was coming until he became the center of attention again, suddenly, some pointing and a nod. It was a more familiar role for him and he felt, for a moment, that he had control back; center stage was where he belonged, after all. He could always handle just about anything that anybody could throw at him, but what they threw at him threw him. Cutting the tie on his wrists, one of the Yakuza tossed him a shovel. He wasn't expecting that, but maybe he looked the most capable of the group, the ex-coalminer, a more likely candidate for digging in the earth than the older Duffy or the man in the dress.

The Yakuza member closest to Raylan prodded him with his rifle, gestured to the ground at his feet and said something in Japanese. Raylan got the picture.

"I see what you mean about guns and translation," said Raylan.

Duffy nodded. "Better than a babelfish."

"A what?"

"You ever read _A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?"_

"No."

"Then never mind, it would take too long to explain. I would suggest, Marshal, that you start digging and hope that they stop you at one."

Raylan was prodded again, the Japanese a little louder and a little angrier.

"Shit." The word came out of Raylan with almost as much enthusiasm as Kurt's earlier version. "It's gonna be hard to garnish or garter anything from a dead man," he said to Kurt as he adjusted his grip on the handle of the spade and wondered how good a weapon it might be against a dozen semi-automatic assault rifles.

* * *

Tim dropped his forehead onto his scope. The irony building on his side of the hill was threatening to choke him. If he were going to have to stick his neck out to try to save Craig Franklin's life, and with a sniper rifle, goddammit, then he decided there was no way in hell he was sticking to the bargain of giving up bourbon, even if the bargain was met and help did somehow arrive in time to finish sorting out this mess.

It wasn't fair. He should have left it alone and let the cards fall where they may – Yakuza-style karma was almost as good as a criminal record. But Raylan and Kurt would likely still be tangled in it, Tim reminded himself. At least now he was in a position to give them some support. Whether it would be enough remained to be seen.

He watched as they freed Raylan's hands and tossed him a shovel. Raylan caught it and adjusted his grip on the handle, hoisting it like a pro, and then looked around the yard, calculating. Tim knew him well enough by now to guess what was going on in his mind. _Don't do it,_ he thought, the bad guy count fresh in his head. But apparently Raylan had the same thought because he turned his focus to the ground at his feet, putting his energy into burying the spade aggressively into the dirt. Adding his weight to it, he lifted a shovelful and dumped it on the shoes of the nearest Yakuza gang member.

Franklin started talking faster, which was precisely what the Yakuza were hoping for. _Stop talking,_ Tim yelled silently, _they'll shoot you anyway once they got what they want_. Another shovelful of dirt and another mouthful of Japanese, and Franklin was jibbering and waving frantically. Someone was sent into the house and returned minutes later with keys and headed for the garage.

"Shit." Tim continued to watch, waiting for an opportunity, or a point of no return. He kicked himself mentally for suggesting that dumb luck was a welcome option. It seemed like dumb fucking luck to him that he should be the one in a position to give Mr. Snipers Are Cowards an opportunity to survive the grave he was digging for himself, didn't matter that it was Raylan wielding the shovel.

The hole in front of Raylan grew steadily bigger. While he dug, two men disappeared into the garage and returned with a crate. It was opened, a tiny porcelain bowl held up for viewing. The suit walked to the crate and fished through it, counting, stood and smiled and said something that sounded very satisfied and final.

Tim rechecked his angles.

The routine patrols had stopped and the Yakuza teams had closed their perimeter in, now closer to the back of the house, every eye riveted on the drama playing out in the yard below. The men on the ridge were now far enough ahead of Tim, a good fifty yards, that he felt safe letting out a quietly disgusted huff at the way events were playing out. He wrestled with his morals, but in the end, what choice did he have, really? He set his sights on a new target, the gunman standing behind Craig Franklin. A handgun was pulled from a holster and raised to Franklin's head. There were a few more words spoken between the Japanese boss and the blubbering philanthropist, then a cold nod, and then Tim pulled the trigger, putting a fast and lethal bullet into the head of the would-be executioner.

Time staggered. No one in the group moved, a long minute of confusion – the Yakuza disbelieving, Craig Franklin gaping at the gun in the lifeless hand, Kurt's hands up over his mouth in shock, Duffy's eyebrows hopping between concern and elation. And in that pause, while time picked itself up again after the stumble, Raylan had a revelation in the form of a replay of the conversation during which he'd heard the name Craig Franklin. He stared, trying to piece it all together – the bourbon, Duffy, Teddy Newton, Kurt, the phrase 'snipers are cowards' and an angry Tim and a neat bullet hole centered between the eyes of a dead man.

"Snipers are cowards, huh?" he said aloud as he arrived at an optimistic conclusion about the shooting and reacted accordingly. Dropping the shovel and snatching a weapon from the body, he grabbed Franklin by the collar, Kurt by the arm, and dragged them both backward behind a vehicle.

Duffy stood still a second longer, then followed Raylan.

The Yakuza responded next, moving the opposite way, surrounding their boss and shuffling him quickly behind cover. The line was now drawn – Raylan and his crew on one side with the shooter, the Yakuza on the other.

It took Duffy a bit longer to work out the direction the bullet came from, and when he did, he wasn't happy that Raylan had positioned them in plain view of the sniper. He started crawling, confused desperation, around to the other side of the vehicle. Catching hold of his ankle, Raylan yanked him back.

"Raylan, what are you doing? Let go!" Duffy hissed and swatted at the hand holding him.

"What are _you_ doing, you idiot? They'll shoot you."

"And he won't?" said Duffy, waving frantically to the hills behind the house.

"Who?"

"The sniper! Or are you so deluded about your immortality and importance that you thought that was divine intervention back there?"

"He won't shoot us. He's ours."

"How do you know that? How could he possibly be ours? The marshals couldn't have reacted this fast. Not even you knew where we were headed, and I don't remember bringing a sniper with us."

"I'm sure of it." Raylan made a face. "Well, pretty sure."

"Pretty sure? Fifty-fifty? Seventy-five-twenty-five?"

"I'd say more than fifty-fifty."

"Excuse me if I don't find that comforting."

"He just shot one of _them."_

"Maybe he missed!"

"He didn't miss." Raylan jabbed his index finger against the center of his forehead. "That was a precise and calculated shot."

The Yakuza were regrouping while Duffy and Raylan argued, moving their hill patrols into position to surround their attacker. The men spread out on either side of Tim's nest, calculating a direction, guessing at a distance, getting the line approximately right, but too short. Their eyes moved restlessly, weapons at the ready, searching the forest for any hint of a shooter, and Tim drew his sidearm again, set it handy in the leaves by his right shoulder, and watched. There was a spattering of Japanese voices, then a burst of movement near the house as one of the Yakuza broke cover and ran behind another vehicle. Tim followed the man's movements through his scope, but he wasn't falling for it. He wasn't about to fire at the target and give them an opportunity to narrow down their search. He waited, patient, willing to give himself away only when it was strategically advantageous to do so, or when things got desperate.

It wasn't a surprise when the man reappeared five minutes later with a sniper rifle of his own, mounted it on the hood of an SUV and aimed up the hill in Tim's direction. He was peering through his scope and doing short sweeps of the forest. He was now Tim's number one target, and Tim lined him up and waited for the Yakuza, or Raylan, to make the next move.

* * *

Miljana shook her head. "No, Deputy Dunlop, he said…"

"You can call me Nelson."

"Okay, Nelson, Art said that you should take me where I need to go."

"He didn't mean…"

"He said, 'Take her where she needs to go.' I need to go get Stell...Tim's buddy and get my car back."

"I really don't think he meant…"

"That's exactly what he meant. Who else is going to keep Tim's buddy from getting involved in this? Art wanted me to take him back to my place and keep him out of trouble, so that's what we're going to do. But we have to find him first."

"But…"

Miljana felt a jolt of guilt for manipulating Nelson the way she was, though more like a harmless static shock from a carpet than any painful cosmic karma zap of lightning, certainly not enough to stop her from continuing.

"Nelson, you _know_ where he's headed. I know where he's headed. He's going straight out to that country estate to try and help Tim. He'll bring a gun, or six, or maybe a grenade launcher, and his messed-up CIA morals and a shit storm of trouble for the Marshals Service. Your chief will not be happy if we don't try to stop him."

"All right, I guess, if that's what the chief meant."

"Take the I-64 to Owingsville. I've got the map that Tim used."

Nelson sighed, started the car and headed for the interstate.

"You can drive faster," said Miljana as she buckled her seatbelt. "It'd be nice to catch him before he gets there."

Nelson sunk the accelerator a little closer to the car floor and began chewing on a nail while he navigated the streets.

* * *

 


	14. Chapter 14

* * *

It was the Yakuza who prodded the players into action. They needed to draw out a sniper, or else crouch behind their SUVs all day. They moved on Raylan and his unarmed posse of mismatched miscreants, their plan obvious and effective: they would force Tim's hand, draw out a shot from him, make him give away his position. It was inevitable that he would.

Tim had one eye on the scope, watching the Japanese sniper through the lens, the other following the movements of the three Yakuza splitting up, darting quietly from cover to cover in a crouch, positioning themselves to come at Raylan from two sides. Of course, their real objective was hiding somewhere up the hill, and Tim knew that. Another few steps and they would leave him no option but to pick a target from among them to assist Raylan, not a difficult moral choice for Tim – an enemy is an enemy – but this kind of sacrifice did deserve some respect. The Yakuza were willingly playing a game of Russian roulette to forward the group's cause. One of them would be taking a bullet and Tim wondered at the loyalty, that they would do that for their boss, or whatever it was that brought them here. Expensive whiskey? Tim mused how far he would be prepared to go for sixty-five cases of Old Pappy. Not that far. But then again, he had just stuck his neck out for a slandering asshole with a skewed perspective on the world who happily stole from other people to make himself rich. Though it wasn't really Franklin's hide that was the motivating factor here. Raylan was down there, too, and Kurt, and Duffy. Duffy didn't count, but Tim would take a bullet for Kurt, no question. And would he for Raylan?

Tim didn't get a chance to finish his game of 'rationalize your actions'; Raylan interjected his will into the day's events, decided to see what was going on, creeping to one end of his particular Suburban shield. He poked his head around. An assault rifle twitched in his direction. Tim's target was decided for him and he pulled the trigger and hit his mark. The Japanese sniper was watching for that moment, aimed at Tim's rifle's muzzle flare and pulled his trigger. The round snapped the air near Tim's head, wet-your-pants close. Tim wet his lip instead, acquired a new target and sent off his own bullet in reply, a bullet sent with the advantage of higher terrain and better sight-lines. The Japanese sniper went down and didn't get back up again, his gambit a failure, but now the rest of the Japanese crime family present at the country estate knew exactly where Tim was hiding.

"Shit," said Raylan, understanding the significance of what just happened. Turning, he looked in Tim's direction, trying to spot him, but there was nothing but bush to be seen and he gave up, moving quickly to the other end of his SUV expecting the Yakuza to move in and surround him.

But all their focus was now on Tim. Eliminate that threat and Raylan's position was weakened to indefensible. The teams had a position on the mystery sniper and were moving carefully up the hill toward him.

Raylan could see the trouble headed Tim's way, but all that trouble was out of the range of his Glock. Short of a kamikaze run up the slope, there was nothing effective he could do. But he did what he could. He shifted to his feet, pushing his weight up an inch or two, and started firing indiscriminately over the hood of the vehicle he was using as cover hoping to get some of the attention aimed his way, improve the odds for Tim. But the Yakuza were a reasonably disciplined bunch, and they mostly ignored Raylan. One or two in the yard volleyed effectively enough with their semi-automatics that Duffy finally pulled Raylan back down.

"You're wasting ammunition."

"He's a sitting duck."

"He's a well-armed sitting duck."

"It won't matter."

"Nothing will matter if we don't get out of here."

For the second time that day Raylan was feeling helpless and it rankled. He wished he'd had the chance to grab an assault rifle, too. "Shit," he said, "I hate being in the debt of a _cowardly_ sniper." He glared at Craig Franklin, and Franklin blanched. "How about I hand you a stick and you can charge them, go rescue that cowardly sniper?"

Franklin went whiter.

* * *

Tim gripped his handgun and took a breath, then another, waiting for the enemy to get closer before starting the turkey shoot. He didn't much like being the turkey.

The patrols closed the distance.

The range of his handgun was maybe a tenth of the assault rifles'; his magazine held half the rounds. Strategically, they were too close for his bolt-action rifle at this point. He might take down one or two before they zeroed in on him and turned him into a lace curtain with their automatics from a safe distance – best to wait until they were in range and try to take out as many as he could with his handgun, hopefully give Raylan a chance to make an opportunity for himself.

They continued moving forward toward him, keeping to cover, maybe fifty yards away now.

Yep, he was well and truly turkeyed. Miljana would be some pissed. He was some pissed. This was not the vacation he had in mind when he packed his gear and went hiking. Another breath and the man on point was within range, Tim fired twice, dropping him neatly and permanently, two more shots for a second, skittered a bullet off a third as the remainder dropped, too, for cover, and opened up on the suspicious pile of leaves.

A few more shots fired wildly, then Tim ducked and prayed and changed out his magazine. He could hear the bullets hitting around him, burying themselves deep in the leaves and logs piled at the front of his hide. Not great shooting, he thought, reactionary. _Been there, done that._ He remembered getting over it – that panicked trigger finger – sometime during his first combat rotation after being smoked for a good hour by his rifle squad leader back at base. Lesson learned: Don't shoot if you haven't got a target or a reason. He reminisced while waiting for a round to find flesh, or the firing to slow enough to offer an opportunity to engage. He pictured his sergeant, dog-tired from their mission, still in his combat gear, cursing him inventively and ferociously while managing to stand on one leg and keep his boot hovering over Tim's head at the exact height to force Tim to hold a plank, shaking arms not quite fully extended, a full ruck plus ammo on his back. He grinned into the dirt at the scene, remembered thinking at the time that things couldn't possibly get worse. He hated being so spectacularly wrong.

_Crack._

Tim twitched at the new noise, back to the present. The vision of his sergeant vanished in the leaves pressed against his face while he strained to hear the sound that he swore he just heard.

_Crack._

Someone firing a high-powered rifle, somewhere…to his right?

_Crack._

Another shot, some urgent Japanese voices.

_Crack._

He could no longer hear rounds hitting his hide.

_Crack._

Cautiously lifting his head, Tim put an eye to the scope and zeroed in on the sniper rifle on the SUV below, but no one had volunteered to take the place of the dead man. That rifle was silent.

_Crack._

No rounds splitting the air near his head.

_Crack._

Weaver? A nice thought.

The Yakuza teams were scrambling for cover from the new threat, grouping on Tim's left. Tim lifted his head a bit more, peering over the berm he'd made for his rifle to rest on. Another body had joined the two that Tim had shot, and the distracted Yakuza were offering a few targets, so Tim chose one and aimed, fired two rounds and dropped another. Now they were retreating, skidding back down the hill away from Tim and toward better cover.

Raylan saw an opportunity to join in, pushed his gang down flat in the grass and fired over their heads at the teams on the ridge coming back his way.

Tim set down his handgun and got back in position behind his rifle. The three of them, Raylan, Weaver and Tim, now had the Yakuza separated and on the defensive again. One more fell among the bullets before they could regroup at the back of the house. Tim was happy not to be the turkey anymore, adjusted himself to a more comfortable hunting position and waited for a head to pop up.

But it was a .50 caliber machine gun that showed itself instead, pulled from the SUV closest to the road and set up on the hood. The Yakuza had had enough.

"Fuck." The word came out a mousy squeak. Frantically, Tim swung his barrel to the right side of the yard, hoping to get a shot at the man behind the machine gun. He could just make out the hands calmly and expertly loading the ammo belt into the feed tray, but no clear angle. He fired a round, heard it hit the shield. _Where the fuck did they get that?_ he thought, watching helplessly, the bolt latch release locked down, fully automatic, the barrel adjusted his way. "Fuck," he repeated, once again burying himself into the forest floor.

 _Gug-gug-gug-gug-gug-gug-gug-gug-gug._ The sound was unmistakable, devastating, petrifying. The woods around Tim exploded, leaves and wood splinters airborne in an organic fireworks show. A branch from the tree above, severed from the trunk, landed across Tim's legs.

Kurt shrieked; he and Franklin and Duffy managed to get even lower to the ground and covered their ears.

_Gug-gug-gug-gug-gug-gug-gug._

"Fuck!"

Tim yelled it this time, aimed it at the .50 caliber rounds that were eating their way like Pac Man through his bit of forest. He pushed back up to man his rifle, reckless, desperate to finish this, put his eye to the scope, but instead of a huge mother-fucking bullet coming his way what he saw was the help he'd begged for, or maybe it was dumb luck. A black sedan appeared out of nowhere, manifesting somehow from between the air molecules, and careened headlong into the SUV where the machine gun was perched. The gug-gug-gug ended abruptly, the aural rift filled with the grind of two masses colliding, the groan of metal giving way, then a silence as loud as the battle.

Tim had to close his gaping mouth to form the word, "Fuck," one last time. He wasn't quite sure that he actually saw what he saw, but the mangle of machine gun, SUV and sedan was undeniably real.

A few other heads popped up behind vehicles, disbelief, staring, guns slowly raised again, Japanese voices, the battle winding up for a second round. But a cliché of well-timed sirens interrupted before another shot could be fired, Sheriff's cruisers and three US Marshals vehicles crowding the yard, more weapons, more yelling, southern midland American English mixed in with the Japanese, a bullhorn, a bull voice, Art, hands being raised, guns being dropped, orderly mayhem. Dumb luck or divine intervention – Tim didn't really care which – had arrived in force.

It ended a lot faster than it started.

Raylan picked up his hat and settled it on his head, then patted Kurt on the back and stood up, a cavalier smile and wave for Art.

Tim uncramped his hand from the trigger of his rifle and let his shoulders droop, the relief spreading to each limb as he watched Rachel and Art take control of the battlefield. His mouth gaped a second time when the door to the .50-caliber-machine-gun-defeating sedan opened and Nelson lurched out holding his head in one hand and his Glock in the other.

* * *

 


	15. Chapter 15

* * *

Tim kicked off the branch that had fallen across his legs, curled in on himself, fetal position, closing his eyes and loosening muscles, then flopped over on his back and stared up through the branches, what was left of them. Eventually he sat up, crossed his legs underneath him, lifted his rifle and laid it on his lap. He dug his fingers into the leaves and dirt around him, looking for bullets, and watched the party in the yard. He was happy for the distance.

A sheriff's deputy and one of the marshals from the office disappeared into the garage and came out with two boxes of whiskey and matching smiles. Art had been talking with Craig Franklin but the whiskey distracted him, and he turned and walked over and rubbed a hand over one of the boxes, shared a lottery-winning grin with the local sheriff. A hand on Nelson's elbow, Rachel was guiding him back to what was left of his car, then the two of them got to work trying to open the passenger side door. Standing protectively near Kurt, Raylan was doing some fast talking to a local deputy, likely explaining the presence of the Courtney Love look-alike with an expert twist of words. And Duffy stood off to the side, stiff and awkward, trying to avoid attention, looking like a Comic Con attendee in costume who wanders accidently into the neighboring gun show.

Craig Franklin looked good in handcuffs, Tim decided, reaching to scratch the itch that was his companion lately, somewhere behind his left ear. It was only when his hand reached his head that he realized the itch was gone. He wasn't sure if it was the handcuffs on Mr. Snipers-are-cowards or being the target of a functional .50 caliber machine gun that offered relief; he wasn't going to think hard enough about it to figure it out. Instead, he ejected the round chambered in his rifle, put on the safety and stood up.

Shedding leaves as he went, a forest dust devil, Tim trotted down the slope to the yard carrying his weapons. The beard was a good three days old now, filling in nicely, and the personal aroma was filling in nicely, too. A fireman's line was emptying the contents of the smuggler's hole into the yard, and Art stepped out of it, wove past the mingling crowd admiring the growing stack of bourbon and stopped directly in Tim's path. He pounded a hand onto each hip and worked his face into a perfect disapproving Chief Deputy US Marshal scowl.

Tim slowed his trot to a wary but unapologetic walk. "I didn't shoot him. See." He waved with his rifle to the cruiser into which a local deputy was folding Craig Franklin. "He's walking and talking…or would be anyway, if he weren't handcuffed and a pouty sorry sack of shit sitting in a sheriff's car and waiting on a trip to lock-up." He grinned wickedly at the thought.

Art detached his hands from his hips and did a slow clap, but didn't look particularly pleased or impressed with Tim's performance. "Congratulations, you've cleared your slurred name. How many bodies did it take?"

"I'm not sure," said Tim, looking around the yard. "I lost count."

"You lost count."

"Hey, if I wasn't here, it might've been Raylan and Kurt and Franklin in that body count…and Duffy."

"Uh-huh."

"And you might never have found the bourbon. Do you think they'll give you a bottle?"

"Don't do that."

"What?"

"Try to distract me from being mad at you." Art reminded Tim of a drill sergeant just then, looking him up and down trying to find something else to yell about. "That's not your service weapon." He gestured at Tim's handgun.

"Nope."

"Registered second, I hope? 'Cause at least then I can make a believable attempt at retrofitting you out of your vacation and into this investigation in some sort of official capacity in my report."

"I qualified on it two weeks ago."

Art sighed, a resigned nod. "Well, good, I guess. You're damn lucky, Tim, that there's bourbon here. I'm just saying – damn lucky."

Tim thought it best to divert attention. "Did you see what Nelson did? He's the man. He saved the day. Those Yakuza dudes were seriously trying to kill us. That was a Ma Deuce they were cutting loose with just before you arrived."

"A Ma Deuce…?" Art repeated, body language calligraphy asking the question, too, and then quickly, "Never mind," shutting Tim's mouth as it opened to elaborate. "Yep, Nelson sure is _the man,_ bringing a civilian to a gun fight and involving her in a car wreck."

"A civilian? But Kurt wasn't anywhere near the SUV he hit."

"Who's Kurt?"

Tim looked for Raylan, found Kurt there, too. Art followed his gaze, a different question now forming on his face.

"Kurt?" said Tim, a head tilt in the man's direction, a prompt for Art.

Without batting an eye at the dress, Art shrugged and said again, "Who is he? And how's he involved in this?"

"He's, uh..." Tim peered around Art for a closer look at the wreckage that was Nelson's Marshals Service pool car. He grinned all over again while he inspected the damage close up, remembering the spectacular rescue. Nelson caught his eye next, looking a little worse for wear, leaning heavily against the wreck, and then Rachel, squatting down by the driver side door, her hand on the shoulder of a woman with her head down in bloody hands, brown hair, a Ranger hoodie, _his_ Ranger hoodie. Tim's grin fell off his face and thudded to the ground. He almost threw his rifle at Art in his hurry to get to her, jumped a member of the Yakuza lying prone in the dirt and being processed, hopped up on a bumper to get past the stack of whiskey, scrambled over the attached hood and landed at a run on the other side.

"Milja? Milja? Are you all right?" He stopped beside Rachel, teetering forward, gripped her arm and gave it a shake. "Is she all right?" Before Rachel could answer he pushed her aside and squatted down in front of Miljana. "Fuck, what happened? Never mind, I know what happened. Were you _driving?_ Shit, what are you doing here? Why aren't you at work? Is that my hoodie you're wearing…in public?"

Miljana lifted her head, a wad of tissue pressed under her nose, eyes on his for a long minute, then she answered, voice muffled and nasal, "Yes…no. And, no. And why the hell do you think, you moron? I couldn't work when Stella told me... And, it's my personal therapy." She looked down, picked at the front of the hoodie. "I got blood on it."

Tim's face went blank, buffering as his mind sorted through the answers. "Shit, sweetheart, I'm sorry," he said, pulled her out of the car and settled them both on the leaves and dirt. "I'm sorry. You weren't supposed to get involved in this. I told Weaver to tell you I was fine." He attempted to pet her hair down flat, bit his lip when the tears started a trek down her cheek to meet the blood and mucus on her chin.

"You're an idiot," she said.

"Yeah, I get told that a lot. Say it again. I deserve it."

"You're an idiot."

"I'm an idiot, but are you okay?" he repeated, "Sweetheart?" then repeated the question but at Rachel. "Is she okay?"

"Airbags are pretty violent about saving lives – a bit like you…and Raylan."

Entertained by the comparison, Miljana snorted into her tissue, and started the blood flowing again from her nose. She dropped her head forward to stop it dripping down her throat. "And Nelson," she added and a noise escaped through the wet and goo, sounding suspiciously like a giggle.

"That's not fair," said Nelson. "You grabbed my knee and yelled at me to speed up."

"She'll have a nice set of black eyes to explain," said Rachel, then waved a hand at them all in disgust and walked across the yard to help where needed.

Any righteous anger at Franklin was now a cardboard cutout emotion compared to the fullness of the guilt Tim felt for dragging Miljana into his vendetta. He dipped his head, trying to catch her eye. "I'll make you a Bourbon Pecan Pie," he said.

"That's a start."

"And give you a back rub every night until my vacation's over."

"That's not even another four days."

"Every night for a month?"

"And you'll come to every dinner I'm obliged to attend without causing an international incident."

He swallowed hard, his hand alternating between smoothing her ruffled hair and working calming circles on her back. "Okay."

"And you'll give up drinking during the week."

Something moving up in the forest caught Tim's attention when she added the last condition to his pardon. "Okay," he said, not really listening. His attention was focused on a broad and self-satisfied and slightly off-center grin marring an otherwise lethal looking figure humping down the ridge near the road side of the yard, confident strides, a tricked out and angry high-powered rifle handled with experience and ease, camouflaged hunting gear minus the dayglo orange don't-shoot-me vest.

Miljana lifted her head to look at Tim. "Okay? Did you even hear what I said?"

Calculating the figure's trajectory and projecting, Tim followed it ahead to where Art was again standing with the local sheriff, Raylan and Kurt, possessively near the stack of whiskey cases. His tongue traced a nervous path across his upper lip and the comforting circles he was tracing on Miljana's back became automatic, mechanical, the soothing rhythm lost in the anticipation of the disastrous collision of his two worlds.

Feeling the shift in focus, Miljana turned to look at what had Tim's attention. "What?" she said.

"Nothing. Everything's fine."

"Bourbon Pecan Pie, huh?" Nelson decided that the ground looked inviting and crumpled himself adjacent to Tim and Miljana. "I like pecan pie."

"Tim will make you one, too."

"I didn't know you liked to bake, Tim," he said.

Tim's hand had stopped, hovering, eyes riveted on his buddy, Weaver. Hands on hips was apparently a pose Art reserved for his deputies, Tim realized as he watched his boss cross his arms aggressively and face Weaver. Wishing he could read lips, Tim chewed on his own and strained to hear any syllable to give him a clue as to what Weaver and Art were discussing.

Nelson didn't get a response from Tim, so he asked Miljana, "Is he a good baker?"

"I promise you'll find out." She reached across and patted Nelson's knee. "Nice driving," she said.

"That was kinda cool."

"It was. You don't mind making two pecan pies, do you, Tim?"

Raylan had taken a step sideways, a funny look on his face as he shook Weaver's hand, then another funny look directed at Tim.

"Tim?" Miljana poked him.

"Shit."

"What?"

"Uh…Hadadezer has joined the party."

"What?! I thought he'd just…ride off into the sunset or something, then meet us back home for some beer."

"So did I."

"Shit. Go."

"But you…"

"Go." She shifted to the ground and swatted Tim. "Go! Nelson'll keep me company."

Tim jumped up and sprinted to the group near the bourbon, cut between Weaver and Raylan. "I got this," he said, quick slap on Raylan's back. Weaver spread his arms for a hug and Tim obliged him.

"Nice shooting," said Weaver, his enthusiasm contagious, yanking a grin onto Tim's face, too.

"And nice timing, buddy. Enter stage right."

"Why, thank you. Though I'm not here for praise – I just didn't want to be the one to tell Miljana her psych-experiment boy-toy got broke."

"Bullshit. You didn't want to miss out on the action. You're a chaos junkie."

"That might've been part of it."

"Part of it. Try all of it."

"You're saying I don't care about you?"

"Oh, I'm sure you care," Tim said, glancing over at his boss, arms still crossed, still watching Weaver intently. Tim was already dreading the lecture he was going to get later. "I don't doubt you'd show at the funeral, if the invite got to you in time."

"I'm hurt."

"You have no feelings."

"Now I'm really hurt."

"What? You get hit in the crossfire?"

"Dude, I'll have you know that I chased all over Lexington to get you back-up, and then I stole a car, just for you, to get here in time to save your adorably obsessive ass."

"What d'you mean you stole a car? Where's your truck?" Concern about the lecture he was going to get from Art was quickly replaced by concern about his personal stash of stolen whiskey.

"Are you trying to get rid of me?"

Leaning in, Tim spoke for Weaver's ears only. "You usually get rid of yourself. What the hell are you still doing here? And what happened to your nice rental, the one with my bourbon in it?"

"I got a red sedan around here somewhere, stole it from out front of the court house. I was in a hurry and it was parked illegally anyway. I probably saved her car from getting towed, or having the bomb squad crawl all over it with those mirrors on sticks and those big dogs."

"You stole _Milja's_ car? Where's yours?"

"You know she didn't even lock it – not that it would prevent it being stolen if someone was determined, but it's at least a deterrent to the casual thief. You might want to remind her to lock it. But anyway, I had her keys."

" _Where's your fucking truck?"_

"At her office. Dude, calm down. She insisted on driving when we went to see your boss. She's a take charge kind a gal. I admire that. Did you see her yelling at Nelson to take out the .50 cal? She was all fired up."

"She was...?" Tim's face screwed into a knot while he got his mind around what Weaver was saying. "Does she know you have her car?"

"Well, probably. Why else would she be here?"

"For me?"

"Dude, I'm trying to protect your feelings. She's really here for me." Weaver pressed his hand to his chest. "She likes me. I know she does. She pretends not to, but…it's there."

"Your fantasy life is clearly more interesting than your real life, and that's saying something."

The whole time they bantered, Tim was slowly maneuvering Weaver away from Art and Raylan, a step to the side, then back, a little pressure from a hand placed casually on an arm, subtle guidance. The intention wasn't lost on Weaver.

"You _are_ trying to get rid of me."

"Let me see." Tim reached out a hand, waggled his fingers, trying another method to put distance between his worlds.

Knowing exactly what Tim wanted, Weaver held out his rifle and Tim took it from him, and took another step away from the group at the same time under the guise of needing more space to inspect Weaver's weapon.

"Jesus, is that an PSG1 hiding underneath all this shit. What the hell have you done with it?"

"It needed some blinging."

Raylan had sidled over to the two Tims, bored with the bourbon conversation. He peered at Weaver's rifle, asked a question to try to glean more information on Tim's friend. "It's a semi-automatic?"

Weaver nodded. "I try to tell him he's gotta get one, get with the twenty-first century. Bolt-action. Pshaw."

"The bolt action's more reliable. And besides, when do I ever need rapid fire in this job?"

Weaver and Raylan answered together. "Today."

"Okay, so that's once." Tim handed the rifle back. "No _Hello Kitty_ stickers this time?"

"I used them up on my last one."

"How will I know it's yours then?"

"Easy. It's the best sniper system in the world, and you'll know it's mine when you go green with envy every time you look at it."

"There's that imaginary world you live in again." Tim gave up trying to be subtle and started manhandling Weaver toward the road. "It's fucking heavy and fucking expensive."

"See? Jealous. It's a dull life you live."

"You call this dull?"

"Meh."

"Where's Milja's car? I'll walk you over."

But Tim's escape was thwarted. A meaty hand grabbed hold of the back of his collar and dragged him back a step, and a voice that sounded discouragingly like Art's said, "Not so fast, boys. I need a word with you two."

* * *

 


	16. Chapter 16

* * *

Bradley Bachmeier skimmed through the file, the state's charges, the evidence. "It would've helped if you'd been drinking the bourbon yourself rather than trying to sell it."

Both Raylan and Tim reacted with the same face of horror, and the room felt suddenly crowded with the four men _and_ the marshals' puffed up indignation. They both gawped, both said, "You were _selling_ it?"

Kurt shrugged. "I hate the taste of hard alcohol. What I really like is wine." Looking over at Tim, he was suddenly shy, said, "That's a Courtney Love quote. I drink wine, too, just like her."

"He was selling it on EBay," Bachmeier explained. "The bidding was up over three thousand before the listing was pulled."

"Now Marshals, I didn't know that whiskey was stolen. I was just trying to recoup some of my costs. Teddy and his cousin ain't paid rent in…shit, months. And they had two other men staying with them all the time and using electricity and stuff. I helped myself to some of their things and thought I'd see what I could get for it."

Raylan exchanged a look of disbelief with Tim, shook his head. "You must've been suspicious when the bidding went up that high. Didn't you wonder what Teddy was doing with a case of that class of bourbon?"

"I did think it was a little weird, so many people bidding on it."

"A little? That's like a hundred percent mark-up."

"I think it lists at a hundred and thirty," said Tim, "so that's actually closer to a twenty-two hundred percent mark-up. But, since you didn't pay for it, it's actually an infinite percent, something undefined if you're starting from zero."

Raylan's face screwed up, like he'd taken a mouthful of lemonade before adding the sugar. "Thank you, Mathman. But what's that got to do with anything?"

"I'm just saying – it's a huge fucking profit."

"Stop talking."

"Just 'cause you don't understand it, doesn't mean it isn't relevant or interesting."

"It ain't interesting…or relevant."

Tim crossed his arms and sat back. "You have no imagination."

"What I can't imagine is selling a bottle of Pappy to the highest bidder. That's…that's not so much a crime as some kinda moral sin," said Raylan.

Tim nodded in agreement. "Gotta be in the ten commandments – thou shalt not whore good whiskey."

Raylan flicked a hand in Tim's direction, a gesture meaning 'what he said.' "Anyone have a bible handy, so we can check that?"

"It's a crime if it's stolen," said Bachmeier, flipping to the arrest sheet. "The judge won't care how good the whiskey is."

"You underestimate the Kentucky circuit court judges' love of bourbon at your peril. Who's sitting?"

"McAfee."

Raylan grimaced. "Oh. He'll be upset."

"I don't think the State of Kentucky court can rule on the morality of it."

"The State of Kentucky, in this case, is a borderline alcoholic. I've seen the man drink. He'll be as horrified as we are."

Bachmeier paled a little, made a note. "I'll make sure to tread lightly, explain that my client has no understanding of bourbon, that he was just trying to make ends meet. Maybe that'll help."

"It might." Raylan stood up, picked his hat up off the table and motioned Tim to the door. Holding it open, he turned back to the lawyer. "And tell the judge he was coming out to Franklin's place to warn us that he suspected the bourbon was more important than he thought, like he was helping us. We'll back you."

"All right," said Bradley, making another note.

"Are we done here?" Raylan nodded at the defense attorney. "You got this?"

"He's not a predicate offender, and with all the other circumstances surrounding this, and Craig Franklin and Teddy Newton in jail for the actual theft with nothing to suggest that Kurt was involved in the planning or execution of the original crime, I can plead it down to a misdemeanor, no problem, maybe some community service. Kurt will be home by lunch tomorrow if it gets in front of the judge early enough."

Raylan listened patiently then said, "Bradley, where'd you get your degree?"

"Uh, Pace."

"New York?"

"Yeah."

"Uh-huh." Dismissing the attorney, Raylan addressed Kurt, "We were pulling your leg earlier, and your lawyer, he's earnest, bit of a newb, but you'll do all right with him. My take on this is that the judge will listen to all the extenuating circumstances then dismiss the charges, probably give you a standing ovation and a citizen's citation for your involvement in the apprehension of the real criminals." He turned back to Bachmeier. "This is Kentucky, not New York City. You'll get used to it."

Tim hid a smile behind his hand, in full agreement with Raylan's assessment, and Kurt looked a bit bolstered by the idea.

"All right then." Raylan looked around, as if he were checking to see if he'd left anything behind. "Kurt, you might wanna wear your dress to court. Might help depending on McAfee's mood."

"Really?"

Bachmeier strained his neck twisting around to stare at Raylan, brought his hand up to rub it in reaction and blurted out a "What?"

"He's kidding," said Tim. "You'll be going over from lock-up. It'll be orange for you unless you specifically ask for civilian clothing."

"Oh." Kurt looked disappointed. "Can I ask for my dress?"

"You haven't really got a lot of time before the arraignment, and hey, Courtney got to wear orange a lot in her career. If you're gonna do her, you might as well do her right." Tim's observation seemed to perk Kurt up even more. He was sitting a little straighter, a smile hinting, half anyway, the first sign of one since the marshals had sat down with Kurt and his public defender. "But I don't mean you should go getting a drug habit and get arrested a half dozen more times. Once is enough."

"Okay." And Kurt gave Tim a whole smile.

"What are you guys talking about?" said Bachmeier, even more nervous now.

"Thanks for taking this on," said Tim and gestured an invisible connection between him and the attorney. "So we can call ourselves even? We're good?"

It looked as though Bachmeier was about to suggest that Tim was now in his debt again in his bizarre subjective tallying of favors, so Tim decided a quick exit was in order before the assumed 'yes' became a 'no.' He beat a line out the door ahead of Raylan and walked quickly out into the district court house hallway.

Raylan followed, stopped Tim before he could reach security at the main doors. "Speaking of favors…"

"Don't bother asking. The answer is, as always, 'no' – hasn't changed in months."

Tim's refusal didn't seem to upset Raylan, in fact it drew a smirk.

"I mean it – no."

"You came in this morning when I asked."

"That's different. That was for Kurt."

"You sure Bachmeier can handle this?"

"Talk is he hasn't lost a trial since he started here, and he does the plea bargaining thing better than any of them. I've seen him in action. He's annoying, but he's smart. They say he's good."

"They?"

"All the ladies down in records, and those two blonde court stenographers that you always eye – can't remember their names – and Crawford."

"Judge Crawford, the she-bear?"

"Yep."

"You talk to _all_ the women in the building?"

"No, they talk to me."

"Do they not know you're attached at the hip to that crazy psychologist?"

"Oh, they know. They keep stopping me and making small talk and warming me up only to ask if you're single now…still…now…whatever. It's annoying."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. I can't figure it out. I put on the 'leave me the fuck alone' face, but it doesn't seem to stop the junkies or the alcoholics, or the women in the court house with a self-destructive bent. Same difference, now I think about it."

"Well, maybe I can help you out with that. I got a dog in the back of my car that needs a home till Kurt gets out. You take Hole, and I'll get at least one of the blondes off your back."

"Hole? Seriously?"

"Seriously. I remember you and her got along real well. Proper dog, you said. You're still on vacation, right?"

"I'll be back a week next Monday."

"I thought it was a week from this past Wednesday?"

"Art added a few days, said he wanted to get over being mad at me before I showed up again, and he wanted to make sure my buddy had an escort while he was in Lexington vacationing."

"Huh." Raylan tried to look sympathetic and failed. "Dog?"

Tim rolled his eyes, and his entire head went along with the movement and ended tilted a bit to the left, a raspberry blowing. "All right, fine."

"All right."

* * *

The day was finally winding down, the bullpen almost empty. Raylan was sitting comfortably in Art's office, sunk into a corner of the black couch, left arm draped across the back, Stetson perched on his knee, a glass of something held carefully in his right hand. He took a sip and a trace of an honest smile smoothed the stress off his face.

"Interesting couple of days," he said.

"That's an understatement," said Art. "I've never seen so many bodies."

"I'm still not sure what it was all about. I got the impression the Japanese gang weren't very interested in the bourbon."

"Nope. Apparently they were after those little porcelain cups."

"All those bullets for little porcelain cups?"

"Little porcelain cups used in traditional Japanese ceremonies. 'Sakazukis' they call them. They share saki in them to seal a partnership. And Franklin, the idiot, had in his possession a stolen set..." Art picked up a piece of paper from his desk and read: " _...a sakazuki set of historical importance, the set that sealed the agreement between two Japanese crime families in the early part of the last century, the Yamaguchi and the Inagawa,_ and I'm probably pronouncing those all wrong. _That particular pact marked the formation of the most powerful crime syndicate in the current Yakuza regime._ So say the Feds." He set the paper back down and picked up the bottle of twenty-year-old Pappy van Winkle that had pride of place on his desk, turned it around in his hands and admired it.

"Thanks for the history lesson." Raylan licked the bourbon off his lips, raised his eyebrows and saluted Art in appreciation. "And thanks for sharing. Nice of them to give you a bottle. And nice photo, too." He moved the glass salute over to include the picture on Art's desktop – he and the sheriff near Owingsville beside a stack of whiskey cases. A reporter had forwarded it to the office.

"Yeah, I feel bad for taking so much of the credit on this, but…someone had to do it."

Raylan nodded along with Art, appreciating the problem. "I don't think Tim would mind. He's not a limelight kinda guy."

Art set the bottle down, turning it so anyone walking into the office could see the label. Satisfied that it was displayed properly, he lifted his own glass to his lips and took a sip and smiled. "I almost feel bad that Tim's not here to try a lick of this Old Pappy. It'll likely be gone before he gets back from his vacation. Oh well. Here's to Mathman."

"To Mathman," Raylan mimicked, happily toasting and drinking, licking his lips again. A suspicion formed and he eyed Art slyly. "Is that why you made him take the extra days – give you time to finish the bottle before he got back?"

"Maybe." Standing leisurely, Art walked to the door of his office, opened it and yelled out, "Nelson, come have a glass of whiskey with me and Raylan."

* * *

"How is it that I don't even feel marginally bad about drinking this?" Curled up on the couch between Tim and Hole, her black eyes in full bloom, Miljana snuggled a little lower into her Ranger hoodie, blood-free and smelling like laundry soap. "I don't think you're influencing me in a good way." She took another sip of her drink and pursed her lips, considering.

"Yay." Flopped across the chair on the other side of the room, clapping like a madman, Weaver cheered her on. "You're getting through to her, dude. Job well done. Another one corrupted."

Tim grinned at her. "You like it?"

"I do." She lifted the glass and looked at the liquor. "Wheat?"

"Yep, makes it smoother than the bourbons like Blanton's with the mash topped with rye. It's different."

"Not sure it's three-hundred dollars worth of difference, but it's nice."

"Bit of the law of diminishing returns at work, I think. It's fun to try some though."

"The law of diminishing returns doesn't apply when you got it for free."

"I wouldn't say it was free." Tim reached over to a side table and sifted through some bullets in a bowl. He selected a particularly large one and held it up to be admired. "That was coming at me at about three thousand feet per second, four hundred of them in under a minute."

Miljana stared at it, quiet, serious. "That's brobdingnagian."

"That's what?"

She giggled. "Look it up. It's a fun word."

"You could just tell me."

"I'll give you a hint – Gulliver's Travels."

"That's a lilliputian hint," said Weaver, and shared a grin with her, a bit of smug conspiracy.

"Fuck the two of you." Tim leaned forward, plucked a second bottle of Old Pappy from the case and opened it, poured a second round for the three of them. He paused before pouring his own, a momentary splash of guilt for not sharing his find with Art or Raylan. He got over it, topped up his glass and set the bottle down and licked his lips in anticipation.

"You're going through that pretty fast."

"Don't really want to leave it lying around too long, in case. Now I think about it, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the empties – can't really put them out in the recycling."

Weaver and Miljana nodded seriously, appreciating the problem.

"Range?" suggested Weaver. "I like shooting bottles."

"You like shooting anything," said Tim. "But it's a good idea - range. What are you up to tomorrow?"

"Nothing. I'm on vacation."

"Range it is, then. I'll introduce you to Fischer."

"Oh, I wouldn't miss that," said Miljana. "I'm coming, too."

"Don't you have a seminar tomorrow?"

"I can't go like this. They'd probably take one look at the hoodie and assume you were beating me."

"So don't wear the hoodie."

"I have to. It's my therapy."

"You sure you don't want me to get you a couple of those steaks we bought for dinner?" Weaver pointed to his face, admiring Miljana's shiners. "Though the blue does bring out the color of your eyes nicely."

"Shut up, Stella," she snarled. "Go put on some music."

The laugh she provoked was maniacal, trailed behind Weaver as he trudged over to the stereo.

"AND NOT TOOL!"

* * *

the end


End file.
